Chapter Text
There’s a confirmation bias, Rebecca had read, that can form around a life changing event happening at the same time as a major discovery about yourself. An easy conclusion to be drawn that since something was previously unknown, it did not previously exist. The act of discovery ties that thing to a recent event or experience.
Along the same vein, it’s common to attach causality where it shouldn’t be. ‘The event made me this way.’ You look for a reason to believe it could be true, and so it is.
She had gone down an internet rabbit hole after William had come out to them, haunted by one quiet line, spoken like a confession. Like he was giving them a reason to reject him. I wasn’t gay before the accident.
It was true that his life was divided in her mind into Before and After. Not because one was better than the other, but because the difference in her son was so stark, so drastic, that she couldn’t quite reconcile them in her head.
That was not to say that Rebecca didn’t love her son, nor was it that she wished he would act like the William of Before. At least, she didn’t anymore. But a mother notices things about her son, and Rebecca had been noticing different things about hers since the accident.
Again, she thought, not better or worse. Just different.
It was to be expected, the doctor had said. That puberty was just as much a contender in the shift in William’s character as the accident; that this change might have happened anyway. But one thing Rebecca knew with absolute certainty was that the accident did not make her son gay. Her son was gay; he had always been gay and was always going to be gay. Accident or no accident.
It was this conversation she couldn’t help but think of when William asked her and Jeff if they had a minute to talk. She replied that of course they did without looking up from her washing, but he’d said “No, I mean together. On the couch.”
The way he sat on the coffee table in front of them with that same nervous look on his face threw her right back to that conversation. I wasn’t gay before the accident.
“So, I wanted to talk to you guys about something kind of important and I can’t really put it off anymore,” William began, his eyes pointed firmly towards his lap where he was playing with the sleeves of his jumper. “Not that I would try and keep this from you!” He said, looking up at her, then over to Jeff, making brief panicked eye contact before dropping back. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Jeff looked at her in confusion, but Rebecca didn’t have any idea. “You know you can tell us anything,” he said gently.
“Is this about where you went?” Rebecca asked, because she had been worrying almost constantly since he had reappeared that day, battered and completely without an explanation. “About how you got hurt?”
William nodded. “I, um, I want to start by saying that I didn’t lie to you guys about the accident. I never lied about forgetting before. I did lie about starting to remember, though.”
Confusion growing, Rebecca nodded. “We thought you might have been stretching the truth about your recovery, it’s why we stopped pushing so hard,” she said softly.
“We realised that we were putting way too much pressure on you, so we backed off,” Jeff added, taking Rebecca’s hand without looking away from their son.
William was chewing on the inside of his cheek, an anxious habit he had picked up over the last three years. He’d been doing it less recently. Eddie had been good for her son, made him more… settled. Rebecca had hoped it might be something he had grown out of completely. She tried not to let her face show her dismay, too aware that he might interpret something harsher than she intended.
“So you agree? That I didn’t remember anything. You believe me?”
This was a new fear he hadn’t expressed to them before. Of course she knew her son didn’t remember. On the contrary, Rebecca remembered the months William had spent trying to convince them that he did remember with great distaste.
“Of course we do, son.” Rebecca didn’t have to look over to know that her husband had his eyebrows furrowed in such a way that they caused a crinkle to point up his forehead; he had had that line as long as she’d known him and she loved it. She was as grateful now as ever for his steady presence beside her.
“I wouldn’t lie about that,” William said. “I just want you to know that I wouldn’t.”
“Darling, what’s this about?” she asked, her concern strong enough now that she couldn’t stop herself pressing, just a little. She loved her son, but his ability to get to a difficult topic of conversation was not his strongest or best. He got that from her.
William took a deep breath and looked back up at them. “I’ve been doing research for a while, but it only just started to come together and make sense. And then when it did, it all happened so quickly that I didn’t really have time to, like, process it, or whatever? And now I have. And I’m telling you.” He hesitated. “The anomaly in Westview was a spell.”
Rebecca blinked. “A spell?”
“I know they said it was an Avengers training exercise gone wrong, but that was a cover up. I found footage of the incident that proves it’s a spell. And I looked into it, found someone from inside who would talk to me. I know what happened.”
“Does it matter?” Jeff said before she was able to ask the same thing. “So the government lied to us, what else is new?”
William winced. “It matters because… it just matters.”
“Okay,” Rebecca said, reaching for her son with her free hand and trying to sound reassuring. “So, a spell?”
He gripped her hand tightly but his gaze returned to his lap. She wished he would look at them again. “I don’t know how much you know about the actual fight that happened over the blip,” he began, “or about the personal lives of the Avengers, but Wanda Maximoff lost, um, basically everything. And then I think she went a little crazy. Like crazy enough to create a world inside the dome where she still had the life she wanted. Her husband, Vision. Friends.” His face did something complicated that was gone quicker than Rebecca could understand it. “And, I guess she thought a family should include kids? Which is how we know that she’s powerful enough to make children. Like, just create them, over days rather than years. From nothing.” He still hadn’t looked up, but his grip on Rebecca’s hand hadn’t loosened. Now he let her go. “There was a boy. In Westview. Called Billy. Wanda’s son. Not real, I guess. Or, not really. Made of the same stuff the spell was made of, so he vanished when it collapsed. No body left to sustain him.” He took a shaky breath. “He inherited power from her. He could read minds.”
Rebecca felt like a jolt had run through her. How many times had William responded to her before she’d spoken aloud? How many times had he said exactly what she was thinking?
She didn’t look at Jeff to see his reaction, but she felt him stiffen next to her; she knew he was connecting similar dots.
“There was a boy,” William continued, his voice growing thick. “He didn’t understand his power, but he, he was ejected from his world, his life. And he found somewhere he could run to, a new vessel, recently vacated. Empty. And he took it.” He finally, finally looked up at them. His eyes were shiny, a bit glassy. “He stole it. It wasn’t his, but he didn’t know where else to go and it was empty.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat roughly. “And then he woke up, and he didn’t remember anything. People told him that everything was okay, told him who he was, and he believed them. Why question it? There were photos, proof. A family. He didn’t remember any different. I didn’t-”
A cold, sick feeling curled itself in Rebecca’s stomach. Her son was dead. That’s what he was telling her. Her son had sat her and her husband down to tell them he was dead. Had been dead, for years. That she had killed him.
William – the William in front of her, the William she had raised for the past three years - scrubbed his face harshly. “I don’t understand how it works. I don’t have the spell, if there even is one, I think it was just, like, instinct. To escape, to find somewhere safe,” he explained, “but I don’t think it would have worked if the body wasn’t already empty.”
“Your-” she tried to say but faltered. She didn’t want to know. She already knew. “Your body.”
He flinched. “This body.”
Next to her, Jeff was very still. How was one supposed to react in this situation? How would he?
“You said you were going to tell us where you went,” Jeff said, instead. “How did you get hurt?”
The boy in front of her blinked, clearly not expecting this. “Once I’d met with the Westview survivor, I knew it was real. It made so much sense. But I didn’t know-” he broke off, frustrated. “There is a story, among witches, of a Road full of trials and- and tricks. And a prize at the end. Something worth the risk. I needed- I didn’t-” He paused, this part clearly less rehearsed. “I found a witch who could show me the way and we assembled a coven to walk the road together. I know I didn’t tell you guys where I was going, and it was pretty dangerous. You can totally ground me for that.” Then he flinched. “Or- or not. If you don’t want to.”
There was a faint ringing that had begun to take over Rebecca’s ability to think. For a split second she thought – is this him? – but one look at his shattered expression told her exactly what she needed to know. It wasn’t, but he had heard her thoughts.
I wasn’t gay before the accident.
So much defeat in that sentence. An invitation to turn away from him, to say ‘you’re different now’.
Permission.
“It’s okay if you hate me, for wearing his body,” the boy said softly. “I read about it. Sometimes if the death,” Rebecca flinched so hard she hit her elbow on the arm of the sofa, “of a child can allow another person to live, the parents hate them for it. It’s a fairly common response, apparently. And normally they’re fully warned ahead of time. They give consent, like an organ donor. And they don’t have to see the person. He doesn’t usually go home with them and live in their child’s room and eat his food and, and-” he cut off. Either ran out of steam or was too choked up to go on. Did it matter?
“So you can hate me, if you want.”
I wasn’t gay before the accident.
Making a split-second decision, Rebecca cleared her throat and, detangling her fingers from her husband’s, slapped her hands on her thighs. The boy in front of her – Billy – looked at her and she hated nothing more than the fear in his eyes. Her boy’s eyes. “Well, you’ve got one thing right, young man,” she said roughly. “You are most certainly grounded. Three weeks. At least.”
She nudged Jeff with her knee, which seemed to jerk him out of whatever funk he was in. “Yes, three,” he said firmly, immediately agreeing with her. She loved him so much. “One for meeting with a stranger you met on this internet without telling us-”
Billy’s eyes widened. “I told Eddie-” he started before he snapped his mouth shut.
“Eddie knew?” Rebecca said. “Well, that’s no Eddie for a week, too. No, I don’t want to hear it, of all the reckless, irresponsible things. I expected better of him.”
Jeff nodded. “And two weeks for approaching all these strange witches on your own – unless you want to tell me that Eddie knew about that too? No? Right – and for walking this Witches’ Road. You sound entirely too young.”
Rebecca nodded decisively and took her husband’s hand once more. The touch was grounding. “I don’t know what these witches have been telling you, but sixteen is much too young to-” die. Thirteen was much too young to die. “-go gallivanting about without telling your parents where you’re going, and we won’t stand for it.”
Her resolve lasted exactly two and a half seconds before the strangled sob Billy let out melted it completely. Jeff was ahead of her, shifting forward off the sofa to kneel in front of him and place a hand on his shoulder. “It’s been a long few days, son,” he said soothingly, drawing him into a hug and pretending not to notice how Billy’s hands shook even as he clung to him. “Why don’t you go on up to bed?”
There would be grief, and anger, and guilt. That would come later, once Billy was asleep. Their son, beautiful, bright, lovely William, was dead, and nobody had known to mourn him.
But for now, their other son, beautiful, funny, curious Billy needed them. And as his parents, they would be there for him.