Archive of Our Own

They arrive in Westview long after it’s grown dark, long after most of the residents have gone to sleep, as though they’ve flown in on one of those really late flights and then had to drive all the way back—

As though—

They did fly in on one of those really late flights and then they did have to drive all the way back.  Agnes found her car parked neatly in one of the parking garages, grumbled a bit about the cost of having kept it there for—

It’s been how long?

—honestly, she should have just asked someone to drive her to the airport.  It’d been an emergency, though, and Max had needed her, and she’d gone just as soon as Max called—

This is all empty prattle.

Max listens to her old friend’s words as she buckles into the passenger seat of her red Buick Verano, rests her head in one hand, and then stares out the window, taking in the stars above Newark International studded with the bright lights of landing and ascending planes as they pull out and then the grass-studded darkness on either side of Route 2 as they drive the hour or so to Westview proper.

They barely reach the route before Agnes curses, grumbles about how she should have gotten gas before she left, and then apologizes profusely to Max for needing to make a pit stop.  It’s not that Max particularly minds.  She uses it as an excuse to buy a bottle of RC to help her fight the near constant desire to yawn, and then they’re back on the road.  It might not be smart to drink caffeine this late, but she finds she doesn’t really mind.

With the jet lag, maybe it will help her stay awake until what should be a normal bedtime.

When they make it to Westview, when Agnes unlocks the front door and gestures inside, she suggests, softly, that Max take the full of the upstairs (bedrooms, bathrooms, everything), but Max refuses to relocate her old friend to what she considers the dungeon, even though that means she’s stuck in what she has always considered to be a dark, dank, dirty space.  Her breath catches in her throat the first time she starts down the stairs, and Agnes suggests, again, that it might be better for her to stay upstairs.  Healthier.

No, Max says, clutching the bannister so tightly that her knuckles turn a bright white.  It doesn’t scare me anymore.

It’s a lie.  She’s certain Agnes can see that it’s a lie.  Agnes knows, after all.

You don’t have to be strong, hon.  Agnes places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes gentle.  You came here to heal.  You don’t have to force yourself—

I know.  Max sets her hand over Agnes’s.  Thank you, though. You didn’t have to….  She lets her voice trail off, expects Agnes to say something – anything – but she doesn’t.  So she just repeats it again.  Thank you.

Agnes smiles, and although she doesn’t see it, she can hear it in her voice.  Any time, super star.

Max fits into Agnes’s life as if she was always meant to be there, like the shore waves always beat against, the rope tying an anchor to its ship, the ship a lighthouse always seeks out, the fly the spider beckons into her web.  She takes over the basement apartment with trepidation at first, but it isn’t nearly as horrid as her mind imagined it would be.  Agnes has taken great care to make sure the basement feels less like that and more like an entire second floor; the only reason it sometimes feels less than is that there’s not enough sunlight.  There are small slits of windows here and there, but sometimes Max feels like a plant who needs a little more sun.

Like maybe there isn’t enough in the world to make her feel better.

But then Max creeps upstairs, pulling her sweater sleeves down around her hands, and finds Agnes sitting stretched out on her couch, one ankle neatly crossed over the other, a book in one hand – which isn’t so exciting in and of itself, to be honest, but that every time, Agnes notices her, Agnes glances up from her book, Agnes gives her a smile that looks a bit like sunlight.  It’s overwhelming, sometimes, having such brightness directed her way, and so she doesn’t always keep her attention.  She can’t always say anything back, just shifts her guitar where it rests on her back and nods when Agnes asks if she’s going to be playing outside again.

Playing outside sounds like she’s a child, and Max has to admit, sometimes she still feels like a child, the way she is so dependent on Agnes for food and water and shelter and really anything else she needs because she still hasn’t applied for a real job, hasn’t been able to—

Max takes her guitar and sits on the sidewalks of downtown Westview and seeds her case with a few dollars and plays to see if anyone will leave anything for her.  Well.  Mostly she plays because downtown Westview seems like the sort of place that could use some soft background guitar music, particularly the old gazebo.  It could use a bit of fixing up, if she’s honest, but she’s not the sort to pull out wood and nails and get to it.  Callused as her hands might be; that’s not her calling.

Honestly, Max doesn’t know that she has one at all.

She only knows that she likes to play her guitar and that playing her guitar soothes her in a way that even Agnes with all her warmth cannot.

No one really leaves money, but Max leaves the case open anyway.

Just in case.

Max tries to make herself useful about the house.  She cleans the dishes when Agnes cooks, and she cooks when Agnes’s back hurts her so bad that she can barely move out of bed.  (Agnes’s favorite is a hearty lamb stew that it took Max years in college to learn to make right.  But that last year, in the cold and snowy December when their heat got turned off and she’d set a fire going in the fireplace just to keep from freezing – that was the first time she’d made it right.  Or maybe Agnes had been a little too groggy and a little too buzzed to be picky, maybe she’d just craved the warmth a stew cooked over the fire could give, maybe she’d been too comforted when they’d curled up together to conserve heat to consider making Max feel less than adequate.)

Always, always, Agnes beams when she approaches.

When they’d been roommates the first time, in college, that first semester when the school had thrown them together, Max thought it was patronizing.  She’d been embarrassed and had curled up in her bed, turned her back to the other girl, and just avoided her.  Up until the moment she missed her first class – gone to Standard Mathematics that morning, hoped that a bit of breakfast and time would settle her angry stomach, and decided, when it hadn’t, that she’d better go back to her room and try to rest it off – and found Agnes still in bed, eyes red, cheeks tear-stained.

She still lit up when Max entered the room, but there’d been pain to it.

Too many people read Agnes’s energy and enthusiasm for naïveté and foolishness.  Max hadn’t done that, but she’d misread it just as much as anyone else had.

They’d been friends after that.  Well.  Agnes had always been her friend.  Max just hadn’t understood.

And, in the end, Max’s cutting cynicism tore into the students who took advantage of Agnes’s kindness, and Agnes’s gentleness soothed over so many of Max’s odd habits.

Even now, even in Westview, that’s the way of it – Max depending on Agnes’s kindness when something in her brain just seems to break, Agnes swooping in without a hint of complaint and drawing her home.

Sometimes, when Max goes into the basement, her heart beats rapidly in her chest again, her throat constricts, and she can’t breathe.  It doesn’t matter that nothing bad has ever happened in Agnes’s basement, just like it doesn’t matter that Agnes’s basement looks nothing like that basement.  Her breath still catches.  She still feels faint.

Most of the time, Max pushes through all of that, forces herself to her bed, and covers herself with her comforter, breathing deep, timed breaths until she relaxes enough to doze off.  (Sometimes, when this happens, she has nightmares.  Sometimes, those nightmares are memories.  Sometimes, she doesn’t know that they are.)

But not all of the time.

You made me a music major.

You want to point that out to her, in the rare moments when you are conscious of yourself again.

You made me a music major, and I have never been good at music.

You made me a theater major, and I have never been good at theater.

You think this must be her sick idea of a joke, that the entirety of the sitcoms you hadn’t even known you’d been running are the basis for her decisions, and you want to snap at her for it.

You only want to snap at her because you still have rare moments of consciousness.

You only want to snap at her because Max is still miserable, and you weren’t supposed to be miserable.

You hadn’t made Agnes miserable.

You don’t—

“Max?”

The first time Max hides in the spare bedroom upstairs, Agnes finds her within a few moments.  She lets out a breath as she sees Max sit up in the bed, wide-eyed, and with one hand still on the doorknob (and the other over her heart) says, “I just heard all this noise and someone coming upstairs and I hadn’t heard the front door open and I was sure, hon, that you were some intruder coming to kill me!”  She takes a deep breath in – all of that, one breath, in such a rush – and then sighs.  “I’m just glad it’s you, dear, and not someone else.”  Her eyes take Max in, and her face softens.  “Bad dreams, hon?”

Max doesn’t meet her gaze.  Her eyes drop to her hands, and her fingers fidget together.  “I hate the basement, Nessie.  I hate it.”

Within another moment, Agnes curls up in bed next to her.  There’s no I told you so, just the softest, “If you would feel better up here, doll, then you just have to say the word, and I’ll—”

“No.”  Max rests her head against Agnes’s chest and tries to match her breathing with that of her friend.  “It’s not that bad.”

“If you say so.”  Agnes takes a long breath in, holds it for a few beats, and then lets it out.  This is normal.  She’d learned this in an attempt to help.  Max doesn’t need the help, but when she’s there, she offers it without a second thought.  She brushes fingers through Max’s stringy hair and tucks it back out of her face.  “You’re shivering, doll.”

“I—”  A shudder harsher than the shivers cuts Max off.  She swallows before trying again.  “I know.  It’ll pass.”  She grits her teeth together.  Hard.  “It always does.”

Agnes stays with her until the panic passes, not doing much more than holding her, and when the shivering quiets down, she runs her fingers gentle through Max’s hair one last time and asks, “Would you like some tea, hon?  I’ve kept some chamomile aside for you.”

Max just clings to her.  So tired.  So tired.  “Stay with me,” she whispers instead, not a question because she doesn’t need to ask.  “Until I sleep. Please.”

It won’t be long, Max thinks.  Now that the panic is nearly gone, exhaustion takes its place, crippling on the depression she already feels.  Already, she can barely keep her eyes open, and cradled safe against her longest friend, she relaxes enough to rest.

It doesn’t happen often.

But when it does, Max wakes to Agnes still curled protectively around her, clinging to Max nearly as desperately as Max is to her.

Are you awake?

Can you hear me?

Are you ready to—?

Strange men come to the house exactly once.

They call Max—

They call her something that isn’t her name, but she can’t quite make it out from where she hides in the basement.  She knows they’re there, though, can hear them pounding their boots on the floor just above.  She scans the ceiling, catches the glow-in-the-dark stars where they twinkle above her, and listens to voices that seem familiar but unwelcome.

Before she even answered the door, Agnes saw them and told Max to hide.  Not to just let her have her own conversation with them, not to just stay out of the way, but to hide.  (Agnes would never tell her to stay out of the way because Agnes would never consider her in the way.  That’s Max’s bag.)  She’d seen something flicker in her friend’s eyes – something like anger, something like fear – and despite her own fragile curiosity, she’d gone.

Agnes finds her afterwards, apologizes.  Says, uncharacteristically of her, although Max isn’t sure how she knows that because it feels very right for the Agnes she has always known, “They need help, super star, and I’m….”  She grits her teeth together.  Her hands clench into little fists.  “You told me a little about what happened, hon, but I thought….”

It takes a moment before the smile finds its way back on Agnes’s face.  “I’ll be taking on a new job.”

“Why don’t you just tell them no?”

Agnes chuckles, and there is such sadness there.  “They won’t let me say no anymore, dear.”

Max’s brow furrows, and she glares – not at Agnes, but past her, fierce as anything she has ever felt – such deep hatred bubbling in the center of her chest like an unhinged furnace.  “Then I’ll say no for you.”

“No.”  Agnes places a hand over Max’s, stilling a different kind of shuddering entirely.  “No.  That will only make things worse.”

“Nessie, if you will let me—”

Agnes squeezes her hand so tight that Max can convince herself she doesn’t feel her friend shuddering.  “No,” she whispers this time.  “I will take care of it, hon.  I do not want you to get involved.”

There are a lot of things Max wants to do.  A lot of things she can do.

But when Agnes tells her no, she listens.

It’s a boundary.  One of their unspoken rules.

And she will not cross it.

While Agnes is gone, Max takes her guitar upstairs, sits on the couch, and strums.  It fills the empty house enough to echo in the spaces that Agnes leaves behind.

She hates it almost as much as she hates the basement.

Agnes is frequently gone, and she comes back tired.  Exhausted.  Weary.  She still beams when she sees Max, but it’s a softer thing, and her eyes don’t light up early the same way that they once did.  It’s like that second year at college, when Agnes realized she wasn’t good enough to do what she’d always wanted to do, when she’d understood that as easy as the science of everything came to her, the higher level mathematics required to go into the career spaces that most called to her were beyond her, no matter how hard she tried.

She’d been so tired then.

As tired as Max often is now.

But they can’t both be bone deep weary.  If Agnes is tired, then Max will have to pick up the slack.  She can do that, after all, can slot into those spaces that Agnes fills much better than she does, can stand in the kitchen and cook and clean and make sure that there is enough food for both of them, can do their laundry while Agnes is gone, can curl up in bed with her friend and hold her close so that Agnes can take the time to be comforted in the same way that she so often comforts Max.

Once, while Max holds Agnes against her, cradling her head with one hand, chin laying just atop her crown, Agnes murmurs, voice soft, “You’re so good to me, doll.  What did I ever do to deserve someone like you, huh?”

Max opens her mouth to answer – You were good to me first – but something else whispers, soft at first, and then harsher, into her mind: Do you think maybe this is what you deserve?

And her own voice, echoing words she has never remembered – What?  You’re…you’re not supposed to talk.

Something even sharper pangs through her head, and Max winces, squeezing her eyes shut, and lets out a little exclamation – wordless – of pain.

“Max?”  Agnes shifts, pulls away so that she can pull up, so she can run a finger along her jaw, along her cheekbone.  “What’s wrong, hon?  What did I say?”

“Nothing.”  Max shakes her head.  “It’s…it’s nothing.”  She winces again.  “My head just….  Migraine, maybe.”  She starts to reach a hand up to massage her temples, but Agnes’s hands are there first, gentle but insistent.  Instantly, she relaxes.  “This,” she murmurs, hums.  “This is what you did to deserve me.”

Agnes chuckles softly.  “This is the least of it, doll.  You’ve done more than enough for….”  Her voice trails off.

“What?”  Max cracks an eye open, then both, and glances at a young woman who is averting her gaze, even as Agnes’s fingers still press soothing into her skin.  She takes Agnes’s hand in her own and pulls it away from her forehead.  Her fingers press gently against Agnes’s fingertips, against her palm, and then she brings her hand up, brings her knuckles to her lips.

“Don’t,” Agnes whispers, still not looking up.

“Don’t what?”

Agnes hesitates before glancing up ever so briefly, meeting Max’s eyes, and whispering with a tone something like terror, “You don’t know what you’re doing, hon.”

I did not ask for this.

For a moment – just a moment – Max imagines she can hear Agnes’s words speaking directly into her mind.  Her brow furrows, and she almost – almost – asks, What did you just say?  But she was looking at Agnes’s lips, and they hadn’t moved, so she couldn’t have said anything.

It’s still enough to give her pause.

“What am I doing?” Max asks instead, blinking twice.  She isn’t sure if she’s asking Agnes or if it’s a question she’s asking herself, and either way, she isn’t sure that she wants an answer.  Worse still, she doesn’t know what the answer would even be.  So she squeezes Agnes’s hand, lets it fall away, and then draws her against her chest again, in the same position they were in before, pausing just long enough to kiss the crown of her head before resting her chin there.

Wake up, hon.

You’ve been gone long enough.

It’s time to be done with this foolish scheme of—

Agnes never tells Max not to open the door while she’s gone.

Which, you know, of course, it makes sense.  It’s not like Max has anyone to fear.  She’s just a thirty-something dried up waste of space who’d gone after music and theater and failed abysmally at both of them and then crawled into her best friend’s basement to waste away another few months in mourning while she figured out what to do with the rest of her life.  It’s not like anybody really wants Max.

If they had, she wouldn’t have been such a failure.

So when the doorbell rings – an insidious little tune that has always sounded so familiar, even though Max has never been able to place it – Max opens the door without checking to see who’s outside.  She knows some of the Westview citizens by name, at this point, but she spends so much of her time not really interacting with them, outside of playing guitar on the sidewalk downtown, that she’s not certain she would recognize anyone if she did look.

The thing is?

Max knows, when she opens the door, that the kid in front of her is definitely not from Westview.  No child raised in Westview would wear a denim jacket like that because no parent in Westview would let their kid wear denim jacket like that.  Not with all those words written all over it, not with the paint stripes hard on bits and pieces of it, and – well, they’d probably be fine with the rainbow pride flag pinned, but the rest of it—

The kid looks at Max like she knows her, something that is only confirmed when she says, hushed, “I found you.”

“Didn’t know anyone was looking for me.”  Max scans the girl’s face, searches it.  Nothing.  “Who are you?”

“You don’t remember?”

Max’s fingers drum against her pants leg, against the doorframe.  There’s certainly something almost familiar about the girl – maybe she’d been in one of her dreams once, a long time ago; it feels almost like that – but she doesn’t know her.  She shakes her head once and then swallows, steps back, and holds the door open as her gaze drops and she tucks strands of her mousy brown hair back out of her face.  (Once, she might have pulled the strands across instead of back; once, she might have pulled them between her lips and chewed on them.  But she isn’t that young anymore.)  “You can, um. If you’re looking for Agnes, she isn’t here, but you can come in.”

The girl was looking for her.  She found her, after all.  Max doesn’t know why she said that.  She bites her lower lip.

“Stephen sent me,” the girl says, like that should mean something.  “He said it was an emergency.”

Max blinks twice.  “I don’t know who that is.”

The girl’s eyes narrow.  “Stephen Strange?  You don’t know who that is?  You literally crossed the multiverse fighting him to—”

Another sharp stab in Max’s head, and she winces, steps back, one hand flying up to her forehead.  It hurts more than the last time.  She swallows, hard, heart beating rapidly in her chest.  “I think,” she says, and her accent comes on strong, “that you should go.”

“You’re the Scarlet Witch.  You should—”

Max slams the door in the kid’s face.

You don’t know why America is here.

You don’t know why Stephen wants you.

You don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know—

Agnes doesn’t come back for a week that time, and when she does finally arrive, it’s so late that Max is half-asleep in her friend’s bed.  It’s a bad habit, really.  Agnes has been gone so long, and Max has felt so…off that she’s crawled into her bed to sleep instead of dragging herself into the basement.  She could, if she wanted, but she doesn’t want that.

She only knows that Agnes is home when the woman curls into bed next to her, wraps her arms around her, and buries her head between Max’s shoulder blades.

Agnes must think she’s asleep because she says in a voice so low that even now, Max isn’t sure that she’s heard her right, “I know what you wanted, hon.  I’m protecting it for you.  But you’re not any better like this.  You’re still you.  You’re still you.  So come back already.  I’m not cut out for this superhero bullshit.”

Something in you says that you aren’t either.

….

Something in MAX says that MAX isn’t either.

Max doesn’t know what it is, and she’s scared to think about it.

“Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, hon.”  Agnes cracks the oddest grin Max has ever seen – it isn’t happy but it isn’t sad – it’s like she’s trying to beam at her, but it’s broken somehow, and Max doesn’t know why.  “Time off for good behavior, don’t you know.”

“I mean again,” Max corrects as firmly as she can.  “Don’t go again.”  She stares at Agnes as sternly as she can.  “They’re hurting you.  I know they’re hurting you.  So don’t go.”

Agnes’s gaze drops to the mug between her dirty hands.  Chamomile tea.  Max’s favorite because Agnes ran out of lemon-ginger a few days ago and hadn’t wanted to leave the house.  Not that Max minds.  She’d go herself if she felt safe leaving Agnes alone, but she’s so afraid that the other woman will leave while she’s gone and that she won’t get to say goodbye and that, for some reason, she won’t come back the next time.  She doesn’t know why she thinks that.

Something to do with superheroes and how heroes act and how they just keep dying.

Max sees the news.  She knows that much, at least.

Agnes taps broken nails against the scarlet mug.  “If they need me, I have to go, doll.  I’m the expert.  They need an expert—”

“Nessie.”  Max reaches across and places a hand over Agnes’s, but Agnes flinches away.  “I’m not going to—”

“Can you…can you check something for me, hon?” Agnes asks, stepping back, eyes lifting just enough for her gaze to meet Max’s.  “I have a suspicious mole on my back that I just can’t see.  If you could take a quick look, I’d appreciate it.”  She lifts the edge of her pajama shirt.  “It’s right here above my—”

Before Agnes can even finish, Max bends down, runs her fingers along the slope of Agnes’s porcelain skin, and bites her lower lip.  “I don’t see one, Nessie.  I’m sorry—”

Maybe it’s because it’s belated, maybe not, but the sharpest surge of all streaks through Max’s head, and she lets out a yelp of pain, stumbling backward, slipping, and falling to the kitchen floor, banging the back of her head against the lower cabinets.  She whimpers in pain, cradling her head.  It throbs again, sharp, sharp, sharp, and then the constriction slowly begins to fade.

“Agatha,” you growl out as she kneels down in front of you.  “Don’t you dare.”

As Max slowly raises her head, as her dark eyes slowly meet Agnes’s bright ones, she sees how wide her friend’s eyes have gotten, how pale her already pale face is, and she coughs twice before asking in a rasping voice, “What did I just say?”

“Nothing, hon—”

“I…I called you something, didn’t I?  Something…something else?”

Agnes reaches out, cups Max’s face, and offers her such an achingly fond expression that it feels like she should be smiling.  Only she isn’t.  “You’re fine, doll.”  She brushes a thumb across her cheekbone soothingly.  “You’re just the way you’re supposed to be.”

Max nods and leans into Agnes’s touch and realizes that she’s crying only because she feels the wet on the tips of Agnes’s fingers.

Before Agnes leaves the last time, Max brings her guitar up to the living room, sits on the couch, carefully tunes, and begins to play.  It’s a song that’s been stuck in her head for as long as she remembers, one that finds its way under her fingertips near constantly, but she doesn’t know where she’s heard it before.  Every now and again, she plunks out a four note little ditty, and that one feels much more painful for some reason, so she doesn’t do it often (it sounds like a doorbell chime, but it isn’t one that she’s ever heard).  But the one that she can’t get out of her head—

If she’s honest, it sounds a bit like Agnes’s ringtone, a bit like her doorbell chime.  But she can’t place it.

Max sits on the couch and plays the tune and wracks her mind for the words.  She knows there are words.  Sometimes – sometimes – she can almost pull them out—

Before she realizes what’s happening, Max begins to hum along with it, harmonizing with it, hates the way that sounds, and then cuts herself off only to realize that Agnes has started to hum the tune, too.  For a moment, listening to her friend’s voice, Max pauses to listen, and then she finds it, finds her way, catches Agnes harmonizing when she doesn’t – and they switch off, back and forth, that same tune again and again because she feels like she’s close, like the words are on the tip of her tongue, and then—

It’s too late to fix anything
Now that everything has gone wrong—

She stops herself.

Blinks twice.

Looks up at Agnes.

Opens her mouth as though to say something, to ask something, but can’t find the words for what she wants to ask because she doesn’t even know what she’s trying to ask.  It’s something, just like the tune, just like the song, just like the rest of the lyrics, just there right where she should be able to grasp for them and catch them and say something, ask something, but—

Agnes jumps.  Her phone buzzes – completes the tune with her ringtone – and she answers it immediately.  Bites her lip.  Goes to the other room.

Then she’s gone, nearly clinging to Max with her last embrace, before Max can even reconsider what she’s trying to ask.

This time, when Max answers the door, it isn’t the kid on the other side, and it isn’t anyone she recognizes from Westview, but it’s a man with a scarlet cloak and a fancy blue outfit and a scruffy sort of beard that seems to be normally well kept but isn’t right now.  There are grey streaks in his hair, and his eyes remind her of Agnes’s.

Max takes a deep breath in.  “If you’re looking for Agnes, she isn’t—”

“Agatha is hurt, Wanda.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Max growls out much fiercer than she understands, she doesn’t know why she’s suddenly so mad, but she is, and she moves to slam the door in the man’s face, “and I think you should go—”

He catches the door with the end of his cloak – Superhero, Max thinks, and she’s sure she’s seen this one on television at one point or another, but she can’t remember his name – and looks down on her with a tired, tired expression.  He sighs, pinches his forehead, and then repeats, correcting himself, “Agnes is hurt, Max.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”  Max’s brow furrows.  “You keep taking her, and you keep hurting her, and you keep sending her back more and more broken, and I told her not to go, and she still—”

“I don’t think you heard me correctly.”  The man holds Max’s gaze as well as he can.  “Agnes is hurt, Max, and I can’t fix her.”

Max stares up at him.  “What are you saying?”

She doesn’t need him to say it, but she wants him to say it anyway.

She needs to hear it.

She—

                    It’s too late to fix anything
                    Now that everything has gone wrong
                    Thanks to—

There aren’t any tubes.

That’s the thing that strikes Max as wrong.

When someone is in the hospital and they might be dying, there should be a lot of tubes, a lot of stuff hooked up to them to keep them from dying, but the only thing hooked up to Agnes is a singular drip.  It’s like…it’s like they aren’t even trying.  Like Agnes didn’t want—

Agnes wouldn’t want to die, she would want them to save her, what the—

Max takes Agnes’s hand in her own and squeezes it.

She doesn’t feel a squeeze back.

She wants to say something, but she can’t, she doesn’t know what to say, she—

When everyone else is gone, when it’s dark outside, Max strums her guitar, its soothing tones picked and plunked, chords soft.  It’s better than the music they want to use in the background.  She keeps trying to sing something, but she can’t get any words out around the thick in her throat, the rasping, the instinct to scream, to cry, to—

The tears come easy, but Max has never needed to see to keep playing.

Her fingers find that tune again:  Pity, pity, pity, pity—

They’re new words, and they run over and over and over in her head, just those words and the ones she already remembers, connecting to it.  Then nothing.  Just a long expanse of nothingness.

Max tries to stay awake.

She doesn’t want to miss a second.

What if Agnes wakes up?

She can’t—

Wake up, hon; I’m dying here.

Funny that you think I care.  You could die, and I would be happy.

You’d blame yourself.

I didn’t tell you to get involved with the fucking Avengers, Agatha.  That was your choice—

Are you fixed, hon?  Is being Max everything you wanted it to—

It’s better than being—

Is it?  Is it really, super star?  Because – fun fact – if I die, then she—

….

Look, hon.  You’ve got a choice here—

Pretty chatty for someone dying, aren’t you?

Better to talk while I still can, don’t you think?  Or would you rather—

Wanda opens her eyes.

She grits her teeth, stares at all the golden spiraling bullshit sorcery throbbing through Agatha’s veins and keeping her heart still beating, and waves them all away without a second thought.

Then she gathers the older witch’s broken body in her arms and disappears.

“America came to visit me while you were gone.”

Wanda ladles another cupful of stew into a bowl before carrying it over to Agatha’s bed.  She holds a spoon up, blows the steam from the top, and then holds it out to the other witch.  Then she hesitates.  “You don’t mind taking a bite after I—”

“It’s either that or nothing, love, and if you think I’m going to starve to death over such a small—”

Wanda pops the spoon in Agatha’s mouth midsentence, grinning when Agatha shoots her a glare.  “I’m sorry,” she murmurs.  “You were saying?”

Agatha chews the potato as Wanda takes the spoon away and sighs.  She closes her eyes.  “Nothing,” she says, finally.  “I didn’t say anything at all.”

Healing is, surprisingly or not, one of Wanda’s strong suits.

But it still takes her a long time before she finishes with Agatha.

It doesn’t need to take a long time.  They both know that.  But she takes a long time regardless.

When she’s finished, Wanda brushes a hand through Agatha’s hair and sighs.  “You won’t let me go back, will you?”

“If that’s what you want, love, then who am I to deny you?”  Agatha spreads her hands out.  Then she snorts.  “We’ll just end up right back here again.  Or I’ll die, and then you won’t have anyone skilled enough to give you your fix.”

Wanda stares down at Agatha and then says, finally, “What if I tell them that you are mine?  Do you think they’ll leave you alone then?”

Agatha shakes her head.  “First off, no.  Second, I don’t belong to you, hon; you don’t own me.  Third, you would have to mean that, and you certainly don’t.”  She glances up and meets Wanda’s eyes.  “Don’t lie to me, dear.  That won’t do you any favors.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

Every time Wanda enters the room, Agatha beams.

It’s unsettling, at first, but she gets used to it.

She needs a bit of sun to temper her thundercloud, after all.

(And always, always, always Agatha beams.)