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The waves are cool where they wash over Wanda’s toes, the way they retreat and return hypnotizing. It’s a nice day, even when it’s way too cool to be at the beach. Pleasant in her thick, soft cardigan, with the wind messing up her perpetually messy curls, pleasant sitting in the sand, pleasant with Jean Grey next to her.
Wanda hasn’t known Jean for long. As Jean instead of Marvel Girl, that is, but also in general; and she glances to her side, at how Jean’s red hair glitters in the sunset.
She’s beautiful, Wanda thinks, with her porcelain-pale skin and the freckles, with her thin, wiry figure, with the sharp jaw and the pretty smile. It’s all so… American.
(Though, if she’s honest, she’s still not yet very sure what that even really means. English still feels clunky in her mouth, and in her ears, but Jean Grey is kind.)
“I wish it was warmer,” Jean sighs, leaning back braced on her hands, her straight hair tumbling down her back, almost brushing the sand. Wanda is always watching. “Then we could swim.”
Wanda smiles a little. Wraps her arms tighter around her knees. “I have never… swam, in ocean.”
It’s funny, a little bit, how Jean keeps forgetting. Her bright green eyes go wide, wide, wide, and she’s pretty even like this, even when she gestures around, even when she gets worked up or excited. Maybe especially like this.
“Never?!”
“There was no ocean where I grew up,” Wanda shrugs. “Only mountains.”
Jean purses her lips. “Right. In the Balkans, right?”
The wind gets caught in Wanda’s hair again, brushing it into her face until she can’t see Jean anymore as she hmms in response. It’s funny, a little bit, how Jean sounds like she does not quite know where the Balkans are. How Jean sounds like she’s talking about some mystical place.
(Then again, does Wanda not view America the same way? Or did, at least?)
I like you, Jean, Wanda wants to say, but she bites her lip and pushes her hair out of her face to look at the ocean again. She likes the ocean, too.
.
She doesn’t notice it the first time, because, well, Wanda is a little busy. She always keeps herself busy, these days; so she can’t fall into another hole.
So she’s already in the living room, already in the process of reorganizing her bookshelf—it’s something she does a lot, something that keeps her busy, something she can do three times a day easily, if she needs it, something that needs just enough of thought or brainpower to get through to keep her mind occupied—before her brain catches up to her, before she knits her brows together in confusion.
It’s difficult, living with the fear that things she sees might not actually be there at all. Not that Wanda really hallucinates, ever, but she’s still afraid of it, still afraid of her control slipping and reality distorting, still afraid somewhere deep down that nothing around her is real.
Wanda squeezes her eyes shut. Takes a slow breath in, then pushes it out just as slowly. Slides the book she’s holding back into the open space between the other books until it hits the back of the shelf.
She has friends she could call, to help her ground herself. Hell, she could text Pietro, and he’d be over in less than a minute.
And still, Wanda raps her fingers against one of the shelves to a rhythm she doesn’t really understand, and still, she hesitates. Wonders. It prickles down her back, in some feeling of foreboding, but strangely enough, it doesn’t feel… bad.
Doesn’t feel good, either, however. It’s simply there.
With a decisive huff—just doing things without thinking too much is the best way to get over this stasis, that much she’s learned in therapy, at least when it’s about little, inconsequential (inconsequential?) things like these—she turns around and retraces her steps back into the hallway. Stops in front of the full-length mirror that’s on the wall there, the full-length mirror in which she’s seen flames from the corner of her eye while passing just now.
Instead of her reflection—and Wanda knows what she looks like, despite everything, knows it intimately—there’s Jean Grey looking back at her.
(Somewhere at the back of her mind, Wanda thinks that back when she was a teenager out of her water in America, this sight is something she would have liked. Confident, kind, smiling Jean Grey who doesn’t stumble over her words when speaking English, who isn’t scared of the monsters under the bed.)
Instead of her reflection, there’s Phoenix looking back at her.
When Wanda lifts her hand and presses her fingertips to the mirror, Jean does the same. Wanda’s hand feels like it’s burning, like it’s being consumed by the flames. Her neck prickles like part of her thinks the rest of her is next.
.
It’s not being too busy with the Avengers that made Wanda slowly but surely lose contact with Jean.
It was the feeling of something dark prickling down her spine. The feeling of connection, of self-recognition in Jean’s eyes. The feeling of a longing and a hunger so all-encompassing, threatening to shatter her ribcage, that Wanda didn’t know what to do with it, where to put it. The feeling of chaos and of fire. The feeling of utter destruction and distortion of everything and everyone.
It’s not being too busy with the Avengers that made Wanda lose contact with Jean.
(She doesn’t know what it was that made Jean lose contact with Wanda.
It aches in her chest, despite everything. Aches, aches, aches, even when it’s just as much her own fault, as well.)
.
The connection is a little bad. The line keeps crackling into Wanda’s ear whenever Jean speaks a little louder, but that’s okay. Wanda is still smiling, still lying on her bed on her stomach with the receiver in her hand, like in one of the American teen movies she’s started to like.
(Jean got her into those, of course; she has tons of them on VHS stacked in her room.)
“I’m sure you’re not allowed to tell me,” Jean says, and she’s been talking uninterrupted for the past five minutes, but that doesn’t bother Wanda, either. She likes listening. She’s always liked listening, “but I’ve always wondered how the Avengers… work. Like, internally. I’m sure it’s sooo different from the X-Men. But I’m so happy for you! Did you arrive well? Are they treating you nicely?”
Wanda laughs. There’s her room all around her—her room, and she’s never had a room like this all to herself; even when Pietro spends most of his time here, too, even when she’d feel weird without him anyway, even when she had to shoo him out so she could talk to Jean—and she’s… well, she feels great.
Which isn’t to say she didn’t feel great when Pietro and her spent some time in Massachusetts after leaving the Brotherhood, when they had nothing to do all day, when there was just the small town and her part-time job at the bookstore, but it was different. She likes being an Avenger more than she thinks she’d like being an X-Men, even if that would mean that she could be with Jean.
“Pietro carried me here,” she explains. “I have gotten used to it by now, it doesn’t make me feel… sick, anymore. The Avengers are very nice.”
I miss you.
The line crackles again. When Wanda closes her eyes, she can imagine Jean shifting on her bed or on one of the arm chairs in the mansion. All long limbs and pretty eyes.
“That’s good!” Jean says, then there’s a pause, a small lapse in time, like she wants to say something else, like it gets lost into the air and then into the stars. “I was thinking, um, that I could visit you, maybe, some time? I’ve wanted to go to NYC anyway. And it’s not that far.”
Wanda doesn’t remember what she said after that. She doesn’t remember if Jean ever did visit her, either.
(She likes to imagine the two of them, arms linked, shopping together, or sitting in a cafe together, or browsing a bookstore in a mall. She likes to imagine better days.)
.
She can’t sleep.
Hardly a new experience at this point, but still. Wanda can’t sleep, and it’s agony, because she took her meds already, because she should be sleeping, but instead her body feels too hot and her mind too disorganized, and her head is pounding. Instead, she’s staring at the ceiling in the dark.
It’s eating her alive. All of this is, like it’s all coming to rush back, like there’s a hunger inside of her that’s too big for her body, even when she’s an adult already, even when she’s no longer a teenager. Her insides are inky-black, and she doesn’t know what to do with that.
(Maybe she could burn it all away. Maybe someone else could.)
Finally—decisive decision making and all that; though she doubts her therapist was talking about getting up in the middle of the night, dizzy from her meds, to chase a ghost—Wanda peels herself out of her bed. Manages to half-stumble, half-walk into her bathroom, and she hesitates just a second before turning on the light.
Bad decision, maybe, because it stabs into her eyes and only makes her headache all the worse, but she makes her way over to the sink, anyway, grabbing onto the edge of it so tightly her knuckles go pale.
Ignoring the mirror, for now, Wanda shoves handfuls of water into her face until she can think a little clearer, until she can see a little clearer. Then she peeks up.
There’s just her and her dripping face in the mirror. Just Wanda with the wild curls. Just Wanda with the thick eyebrows. Just Wanda with the dark eyes, just Wanda with the sloped nose, just Wanda, Wanda, Wanda, who’s not burning, who’s never been burning at all.
Part of her wants to cry. She hasn’t thought about Jean Grey in so long.
(But that’s a lie, in a way, because she thinks of her every night when she’s asleep. In her nightmares, it’s always Jean who’s looking back at her. In her nightmares, it’s always Phoenix who’s looking back at her.)
.
Jean’s bed is softer than the ones Wanda is used to, and bigger, too. It almost makes her feel a little uneasy—and she supposes Jean’s body next to her should probably calm her down, she isn’t really used to sleeping in a bed alone, after all, but it only manages to make her feel even more…
Well, she can’t quite describe the way she’s feeling. Prickly, all over. Too warm, with Jean next to her, her back pressed to Wanda’s, with the thick blanket—another thing she isn’t used to—on top of them. She feels weird and fizzy like one of those American soft drinks, feels restless like Pietro always does, feels like she needs to toss and turn, but she doesn’t want to stir Jean awake.
Slowly, carefully, Wanda turns around. It’s dark, but her eyes have gotten used to it with how long she’s stayed awake—she’s never been to a sleepover before; never had any friends before, except Pietro, but he doesn’t really count because he is her brother, right?—so she can make out the form of Jean’s flowing hair, drained of its vibrant color in the dark. Can make out Jean’s shoulder, peeking out between the blanket and her pajamas tank top, covered in freckles.
Can make out how she’s breathing. Wanda thinks when she focuses, she can feel Jean’s heartbeat, beating away leisurely, but that surely must be her imagination. There’s no way she can simply… feel that in the air.
And yet. There’s something monumental in Wanda’s chest, and she thinks it’s growing with every day—thinks it’s growing even faster when it’s like this, when she’s next to Jean Grey, when she’s looking at her. She always wants to be looking at her.
There’s the impulse inside of her to touch Jean. To brush her fingertips along Jean’s soft shoulder, to tangle them into Jean’s silky hair. It itches in her fingers, in her chest, in the hollow between her lungs. Wanda doesn’t know what to do with it.
Maybe she never will.
.
Wanda is in love with Jean Grey. Wanda used to be in love with Jean Grey. Wanda has always been in love with Jean Grey. Back when Wanda was still thinking about her, she used to be in love with Jean Grey, but now she doesn’t think about her at all anymore.
It’s hard to get them right. She’s spinning out of her axis, and she’s never quite sure what is the truth at any given moment.
There’s two things she knows: Jean Grey is just like her, if not from birth, then from everything after that. She hates it; it repulses her, forces her to look the worst of herself in the eye. She loves it; nothing has ever pulled her in more, and companionship has always been all she wanted.
(That’s two things. She promises.)
.
Obviously she cannot spend her every waking moment in front of a mirror, that would be ridiculous. Not only that, but it would also wreck everything she’s worked for; every piece of sanity—both for herself and for the way she appears to other people—she’s fought for, tooth and nail. Every bit of stability.
So no, she can’t spend every waking moment in front of a mirror, staring and staring and staring, but she still glances into her reflection whenever she passes a reflective surface.
Pietro clicks his tongue when she glances into the mirror in her hallway on the way out.
“Are you done being vain? We have places to be, Wanda.”
He’s always in a hurry, isn’t he?
(Not to mention that he is the one who is vain; but Wanda keeps her mouth shut for now.)
Wanda hums, tucks a strand of her curls behind her ear, tilts her head away from the mirror at last. Follows her brother outside for their walk—her walk; Pietro will probably just run circles around the park—and for their dinner reservation.
(In the corner of her eye, there’s something burning. It takes her breath away for just a split-second.
“Hurry up,” her brother half-whines, and Wanda lingers, lingers, lingers, tears herself free, like she’s strung up on an elastic band, like she always is.)
.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Wanda’s dreamscape today is a galaxy. She would be lying if she said it’s not a galaxy somewhat frequently, but today, it is a little different. Today, the stars seem a little bit brighter, a little bit more colorful; today, this space seems to be less scarily all-encompassing, less restrictive.
Today—or tonight, rather, she is asleep, after all—there’s Jean Grey sitting in front of her, cross-legged just like Wanda, like she’s still looking into a mirror. Like she always is.
(And that is the name that always comes to her first, in the end. Jean Grey, not Phoenix. Not that that means the other isn’t correct, too. Wanda would know about things like that.)
“You have?” Wanda asks, and even after all these years, even after everything that happened, her voice feels small in her throat. There’s the weird urge inside of her to let her accent creep back into her words, more than she normally allows it to.
(But she’s not a teenage girl anymore, and neither is Jean. They will never be carefree and unburdened like they were back then. Maybe they will never be as close as they were back then, either.)
Jean smiles, her green eyes blazing among all the stars. It feels dangerous, thrilling in a way that Wanda knows so well. Perhaps they’ve both always been drowning in black tar. Perhaps simply doing anything—even if it is this—together is already worthwhile.
When Jean tilts her head, her hair spills over her shoulder like a waterfall, and her face softens. Some of the tension in the air disappears; or maybe Wanda just stops feeling like it’s directed at her. There will always be tension.
“I have always waited for you.”
It’s a cruel answer, Wanda thinks. It’s a cruel answer, because it’s exactly what she—or at least teenage her, once-upon-a-time her—has always wanted to hear.
(Spins around in her chest, syrupy sweet and scalding. Wrecks around in her bloodstream like the chaos that has been native to her body for so long.)
“Tell me about you,” Jean says, biting down on her bottom lip in what looks like excitement. “How have you been?”
Another cruel thing to say. Wanda thinks about all of the years where they didn’t speak even a single word, and she aches with it. Aches with how scared she’s always been of it, of growing together, of fusing, of the same thing living inside the both of them.
Was Jean afraid, too? Has she ever been afraid?
(There’s no way she could ever even begin to put into words how she’s been.)
“Some bad times,” Wanda manages to get out, and her voice feels choked in her throat. “Some good. I haven’t died, however.”
Maybe that is cruel, too, but Jean simply smiles. Wanda isn’t sure if she’s supposed to return the question—Jean is gone, gone, gone, but there’s still so many years Wanda missed. Maybe—maybe if Jean was actually here. Maybe if they had tea together. Maybe then Wanda would be able to spill her heart and soul, and take the same thing in return. Maybe they’d just have to look into each other’s heads.
Slowly—telling herself that this is a dream, that Jean Grey is, well, very dead—Wanda reaches out. Cups Jean’s face with both hands, and Jean closes her eyes with a smile and a hum, leans into Wanda’s touch. Her lashes flutter against Wanda’s cheek with featherlight touches that rob her of all breath, burn the oxygen out of her body.
When they kiss, it feels like the universe shifts a few centimeters to the right. Even when Wanda has already woken up, she can still feel it echo inside of her. Can still feel that scalding pressure on her lips, like a bruise.
.
Jean Grey dies, and Wanda’s heart shatters into a billion pieces. It’s not the first time she’s been heartbroken and wrecked with grief; she gets better.
Jean gets better, too, until she doesn’t, until she dies again. Until Wanda’s heart breaks all over again, and there’s a picture in her nightstand drawer, a picture of Jean and her when they were young, when they were still close, Jean’s arm wrapped around Wanda’s shoulder.
They look so innocent there. So free.
(Wanda dreams about fire and thinks it could have just as well been her. Wanda dreams about chaos and thinks it could have just as well been Jean.)
.
Jean is beaming while she puts more and more books into Wanda’s arms, until Wanda is almost ready to buckle under the weight.
“And you need to take these, too! Oh, and this one, maybe… and this… and, hm, maybe you’d like this one, too? Oh and this is a must-read…”
Wanda feels almost a little helpless under Jean’s enthusiasm, if she’s honest. But she likes books, always has, and she hasn’t had the chance to read anything new for so long. Jean’s room here in the mansion at Professor Xavier’s school is full of books, stacked everywhere, her bookshelf overflowing.
Part of Wanda wonders if she’s already read all of those books. How she finds the time with everything the X-Men do. And things like that.
“I am so happy to be reading,” Wanda says, and that finally gets Jean’s attention, “but I think this is… enough, for now. I will barely be able to carry these home.”
Jean’s smile turns sheepish. “Oh, jeez, you’re right, I’m sorry. I’m just… happy that I finally have another girl to share my romance and romantic fantasy novels with. It’s all boys here, and…”
Wanda nods. She understands; she has spent most of her life so far mostly alone with her brother, after all. Not that she minds. All that much.
But it is nice to be connecting to a girl, and Jean is nice, even when Pietro and Wanda used to be part of the Brotherhood. All of the students here are nice, of course, but Jean especially. And… and Wanda has never ever been friends with another girl so far.
Quickly, Jean steps towards Wanda, taking a few of the books out of her arms. They’re like treasure to Wanda—despite her protests, she actually wants to take all of them home. Wants to stay inside until she has read them all, until she can bring them back, until she can talk with Jean about them for days.
“I’ll ask Scott if he’ll give us a ride,” Jean says, then she bounces past Wanda, the books she’s taking floating along with her with her telekinesis.
Just for a moment, Wanda is left behind.
Then she follows.
.
(Somewhere along the line, she stops following. Somewhere along the line, Jean stops following, too. Somewhere along the line, they stop orbiting each other, stop spinning around and around and around, and the universe stops.)
.
Wanda is reading books now, too.
Well, she’s never stopped reading, naturally. She went from a bookworm to a witch who’s also a bookworm; it’s part of her trade to read a lot. Fiction and witchcraft books and everything in between pile and pile in Wanda’s bookshelves in her apartment.
Pietro calls it a waste of space, but she once watched him read them all three times in a row in under a minute, and it’s not like she’s blessed with talents like that. Plus, Pietro is not a witch.
Jean Grey is not a witch, either. It’s something else, Wanda thinks, that tethers them together, something that goes beyond even them both being mutants.
Wanda is reading books now, too. Flipping through every witchcraft book she can quickly get her hands on, reading all the things she already knows about souls and about dead people and about mirrors, even about necromancy, something that’s only ever been dull curiosity before.
(She’s created life already, three times over. Who’s to say she can’t do it again?
But she knows that’s not an option, because no one can replicate Jean Grey. No one can pull her back where she does not want to be. Wanda is similar, in that regard.)
Then starts over again, because this is a different thing entirely, because Jean Grey is the Phoenix, because she is the Scarlet Witch, and that already twists every rule she’s ever known.
In the end, she has nothing, and she’s still standing in front of a mirror, looking back at her own face.
All things considered, she looks surprisingly healthy. There are no dark circles under her eyes, her skin looks good, and her hair is moisturized. She doesn’t look… obsessed, or haunted. She looks fine.
She doesn’t feel fine, but she also doesn’t feel bad. It’s not even something in between—it’s something else entirely, like every cell of her body is stirring. Like the universe has finally started moving again.
Once upon a time, Wanda loved Jean Grey. She hasn’t spoken to her, hasn’t even seen her—not directly—in years, but she thinks she loves her still. Loves her again.
“Will you come back to me?” she whispers, and for a split second, nothing happens.
Then the mirror bursts into flames.
(When Wanda kisses the fire, it feels like she’s eating something that’s eating her. When Wanda kisses the fire, she feels like something inside of her clicks into place. When Wanda kisses the fire—
It has always been Jean Grey. It has always been her. They have always been meant to spin together like this; two halves of a whole, two sides of the same coin, mirror images.)