Chapter Text
Hunger.
That was what chiefly stood out about this one - an all-consuming ravenousness that overruled any semblance of sentient thought.
That, and the fact that so many of her friends are dead.
Wanda woke, gasping, struggling to get air into her lungs when just seconds ago she’d dreamed that she didn’t need to breate at all. Usually, sleep was the only thing that brought her any peace, when she could dream of Billy and Tommy, but they hadn’t been there that time. Not that she would have wanted them to be there - what she’d just woken from had been nothing short of a nightmare.
But then, she reflected as she got herself out of bed and started to go about her day, it couldn’t have been that bad, could it? She wasn’t sure she could remember what had been so terrifying about it anyway, now that she thought about it. That was a little odd, because she always remembered her dreams with ecstatic, painful clarity, but it didn’t have to make sense. Nothing else did anymore.
Her sons must have been there, after all. They always were. She just must have forgotten that part in the blur the dream had become. And if they were there, it couldn’t have been such a bad dream after all.
***
She’s in a backyard, sitting on a bench swing and reading with Billy and Tommy curled up on either side of her...
She’s in Wakanda, playing hide-and-seek with Vizh and the twins...
She’s attacking people who should be her friends, and she is cold and withered and so very hungry and alone, Vizh is there but he can’t die, can’t be infected, so he can’t truly be with her--
Wanda woke up fighting this time, lashing out with handfuls of raw magic, something she hadn’t done since just after Ultron. She’d had that dream again; she rarely dreamed of the same universe twice, and when she did, it was never one as violent and lonely as the one that had just stolen her sleep.
And yet, even as she thought about it, it was slipping away, just as it had before. She tried to hang onto scraps - the sick aftertaste of human flesh, Vizh sounding afraid of her when he was the one person who had never feared her - but it wouldn’t stay.
She’d dreamed about her boys. Of course she had. And soon, she would find a way to one of the universes where they were, because every other universe had them. She was the only version of herself who didn’t get to have them.
Of course she was.
***
She’s sitting around a scuffed wooden table, drinking tea with Loki and Doctor Strange, of all people, as well as a woman she doesn’t know, and Billy and Tommy. Of course Billy and Tommy are there. They always are, even if their sorcerer-type clothing suggests this is one of the more confusing universes.
She sips the tea as Loki and the stranger-woman tell a story, but as she does, it leaves the taste of blood and congealed saliva in her mouth, and she’s falling into a different dream, one that stinks of death, one where she’s dropping out of the sky to battle the Hulk.
It’s the ssame dream she’s had twice before, the one where she’s a zombie.
The one without her children.
Wanda half-jolted into consciousness, but this time, she stayed still, forced herself to wake up slowly, to not let the dream go all at once. Something was trying to tug it away, something beyond the normal ways of waking up. Slowly, smoothly, as if afraid of disturbing a flighty bird, she reached for the pencil and sticky-note pad she’d taken to keeping on her bedside table, and scribbled everything she could remember, as fast as she could.
Zombies
Vizh afraid
Death lots of death
No children
She stared at her scratchings for a long while, grappling with what this meant. Ever since taking the Darkhold, she’d dreamed every night of universes where she got to keep her sons. She’d always remembered the dreams with perhaps a supernatural clarity. But this dream, this universe, where she never had children at all, had perversely refused to stick in her mind.
Pensively, she swung her feet out of bed and padded out to the living room, where she’d left the Darkhold. It was just lying there, looking innocuous.
But appearances could be deceiving. The hex she was currently living in was proof of that.
***
Stephen Strange, not-quite-Sorcerer-Supreme, answered the door of the New York Sanctum two months before the wedding of Christine Palmer to find Wanda Maximoff on his doorstep. She looked almost afraid, which was not an expression he remembered ever seeing on her before, and was carrying a lumpy, overstuffed shoulder bag that set all of his magical senses ringing like a chorus of fire alarms.
“Can I come in?” she said, glancing apprehensively to either side. “I’ve run into some trouble, and you people are the only ones I know of who might help me with it.”