Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Clint invites Wanda back to the farm as he walks her to her rental car after Stark’s funeral.

She shakes her head.  “You need time with your family.”

“Don’t forget you’re a part of my family too,” Clint tells her sincerely as he pulls her into a hug.

Wanda soaks up his easy strength.  Clint and the rest of the Avengers are the closest thing she has to family left, but everything feels too much.

It’s mere days since the battle, since she formed back dust mote by dust mote in the middle of Wakanda and found herself alone without Vision beside her.

She’s not sure what she was going to do – something – but then Sam had landed beside her and a…a wizard had appeared and a moment later they were back to fighting Thanos. 

She’d never forgotten at any moment that Vision was gone; that Thanos had killed him.  She’d tried to tear him to pieces only to fail when his ship had opened fire.

Thanos was dead.

Stark had sacrificed himself to save them all.

Wanda’s not sure how she feels about that.  She and Stark had never gotten along.  She’d spent too many hours waiting for a bomb carrying his name to explode to ever allow him close to her.

Yet Vision was his creation and she would always be thankful to Stark for him.  Stark had combined his own A.I. JARVIS with the vibranium body Ultron had designed, science from Bruce Banner, the power of Thor’s lightning, and the mind stone; Vision had been the result.

Her friend.

Her love.

She’d killed Vision herself to save them all only to watch him brought back to life to be killed again.  Her heart hurts.

Grief crashes over her like a wave, threatening to drag her under and wash her away.  She blinks back tears.

“Come back with me,” Clint whispers again.  “You can stay with us.”

Wanda shakes her head and brushes away her tears as she steps back from Clint’s embrace.  “Go.  Be with your family.” 

He hasn’t told her, but she knows they were snapped away and Clint has spent years grieving them.  Natasha had given her life to ensure Clint returned to them. 

They’re lucky.  They are together once more; all alive and safe.

She wishes…she wishes…

She cannot stay with them, intruding into their happiness.  She gives Clint a small sad smile and gets in her car.

o-O-o

The lawyer’s office is located close to the old Avengers tower. 

Wanda notes how the building has changed absently, wonders vaguely if it’s still owned by Stark before she remembers Stark is dead.  She shrugs the thought away and enters the plush high-rise.

The receptionist directs Wanda to the office in the letter she shows him.  She’s dressed head to toe in Natasha’s clothes which Sam had given her.  Her outfit at the funeral had been bought by someone in the Avengers Initiative who had kindly gone shopping for her; she has the vague memory of a young woman with dark hair. 

She can’t face shopping.  She can’t face climbing out of the bed she has at the makeshift Avengers camp.

They don’t yet know if the Avengers will continue.  The world is different.  Five years have passed since Wanda blinked away and returned yet it feels some days like a whole eon has gone by. 

The letter had been a surprise and a welcome excuse to escape from the tension which has seeped in since Steve Rogers had left a young man to return the infinity stones to the timeline and came back old and wizened.  He’d stayed in the past and gotten to dance with the love of his life, Peggy.  It’s a version of Steve she cannot connect with.

He is not the friend she had trusted with her life.

He is no longer the leader she followed.     

And she knows her mixed feelings of his actions and new reality pale into comparison besides those of Sam and Barnes.

Vision had left a will. 

Wanda’s heart beats a touch faster as she gets into the elevator, hiding in the far corner, huddling into her jacket and trying not to feel conspicuous as she registers the smart suits and office wear of the people around her.

She slides out at the next floor and takes the stairs. 

Well.

She enters the stairwell and flies up to the right floor.

There’s another receptionist and a wait on a semi-comfortable black sofa.  She ignores the magazines which all have headlines screaming about the return of loved ones to their families.  Her gaze flits to the TV monitor, but there is only more of the same.

She fidgets.

Her power stirs restlessly under her skin, red rolling out of the palms of her hands.

Wanda feels the stare of the receptionist on her and a quick glance shows the blonde is nervously swallowing even as she looks pointedly in the opposite direction of Wanda herself.  It may have been five years since Wanda had been branded a fugitive, and she may have fought Thanos, but people are still scared of her.

Wanda takes a breath.  She slowly wrestles the power back inside of her and it blinks away. 

“Ms Maximoff?”

She looks up into the kind eyes of a grandfatherly man; stout with steel-grey hair and kind blue eyes.

“I’m David McIntyre. If you could come with me, please,” he waves her in the direction of a corridor.  She walks beside him to his office.

It’s warmer and more welcoming than she had assumed from the outer space.  McIntyre’s walls are shelves and shelves of books; photos with loved ones are crammed in front of legal sounding spines.

His desk has a bright green plant and a small bowl of fruit.  He notices her staring at it as he directs her to a chair.

“My wife,” he explains, “she wants to encourage me to maintain the new diet.”

Wanda smiles briefly.

“I might have put on a few pounds in the last five years and now she’s back, she’s determined for me to lose it,” he continues.

He sounds so in love with his wife.  So happy to have her back.

“I want to thank you for your service,” McIntyre says solemnly.  “You saved this world.”

“Stark saved this world,” Wanda corrects him.  Because for all she dislikes Stark, it had been his sacrifice and he deserves to be recognised for it.

“But you all contributed to keeping the alien forces at bay,” McIntyre states firmly.  “So, thank you.”

She nods her head, shyly. 

Has anyone ever thanked her before?

“I didn’t know Vision well,” McIntyre said, folding his hands atop his desk.  “He was a very self-contained individual.”

Wanda feels her lips lift into a small smile.  It was a good description of Vision.

“A prepared individual,” McIntyre said.  “Vision left instructions in the event of his death.”  He sighed.  “He named you as his next of kin.”

It’s like a blow to her heart.

Next of kin.

Vision had claimed her as family.

As his family.

She took a shaky breath.  “What does that mean?”

“He left you his assets,” McIntyre hands over a folder to her.  “There is a sizeable bank account which was seeded by Tony Stark.  Vision claimed he had very little need for it.”

Money.

Wanda wants to refuse it, but her own meagre savings were frozen when she was a fugitive and she still cannot access any of it.

“He did make a purchase though,” McIntyre hands her a pristinely crisp envelope. 

She carefully opens it and extracts a single sheet of paper.

It’s a deed.

Vision bought the lot of a house in Westview, New Jersey.  She wonders why New Jersey as her fingers trace over the outline of the house, over the heart Vision has drawn with his words ‘to grow old in, V.’ inside.

Her breath catches.

Grief storms through her again, her power swirls angrily in her belly…

“My deepest sympathies for your loss,” McIntyre says softly, dragging her back to the present.

Wanda brushes away the tears which have fallen.  She nods.  She stands, more than ready to leave.  She wants to make her way to Westview to see the place Vision bought for them.  She scoops up the folder and carefully places the deed back in the envelope.

She pauses at the door, a thought suddenly striking her.  “You say I am Vision’s next of kin?”

McIntyre nods.

She thinks of Pepper Potts, of the funeral.  Could she, could she have that? 

A goodbye.

She just wants a goodbye.

“Would that…” Wanda clears her throat, “would that give me rights to claim Vision’s body?”

“Yes,” McIntyre states, eyebrows rising a little. 

Wanda nods.  “Do you know where…”

“The government have him,” McIntyre says regretfully.  “I can make some enquiries?”

Wanda shakes her head.  “I will make my own.”  She turns to leave, casts a look back and nods.  “Thank you.”

o-O-o

S.W.O.R.D. have him.

Banner had been apologetic when he’d told her.  Apparently, Vision had remained in Wakanda for the first three years after Thanos had killed him.  But the Director of S.W.O.R.D. had died and her replacement had sued for the return of the body.

Stark had stepped in, claiming rights, and although he had managed to delay them, he had been unable to prevent the eventual decision for S.W.O.R.D. to assume custody.

Vision’s body had been returned to the United States and Stark had been denied access to him.  

Wanda parks her car and taps her fingers against the steering wheel as she contemplates her play.  She is Vision’s next of kin; they cannot ignore that.  She has the right to his body, to give him a funeral.

He deserves that much.

She deserves that much.

Her power shifts under her skin, red energy brimming over to roll over her skin. 

Wanda takes a deep breath.

She ignores how much her heart aches.

It’s not physical.

She’s felt this pain before.

As a child losing her parents.

As a sister feeling her brother die.

She has survived it.  She will survive it.  She just needs to say goodbye.  She never gets to say goodbye.

She strides confidently up to the security desk, aware her every move is being monitored.  She knows they know who she is.

The agent on the desk stonewalls her politely enough and for far too long until his boss intervenes.  Wanda’s annoyed enough at the treatment to make a show of powering through the doors and storming to the Director’s office.

What he shows her…

Vision’s body is dismembered.  His limbs, body and head are separated grotesquely, arranged on separate trays as though he is nothing but parts.

She cannot bear how they treat him; drilling and scraping and pulling him even further apart…

“Not everyone has the kind of power which can bring their soulmate back online,” the Director states.  “Forgive me, back to life.”

Does she…could she?

No.

She doesn’t have that kind of power.

“It’s not why I’m here,” she says out loud.

She just wants to bury him with dignity; to say her goodbye. 

“He isn’t yours.”

The cruelty of that makes her power surge in anger.

Why can’t they just leave them alone?

The glass breaks under her palms.

She’s down in the lab with Vision in a heartbeat.

But he’s not there.

Not really.

He’s gone.

There is nothing to bring back.

Others have their loved ones returned to them, but not Wanda.

Tears fall down her cheeks as she walks away.

She gets back in her car.

She doesn’t know where she should go.

Wanda feels frighteningly alone.

For a moment she thinks about going back to the Avengers camp but…the envelope she’d placed on the passenger seat catches her eye.

No, she thinks.

She won’t go back there.  Not when everything and everyone reminds her of Vision, of what she has lost.

It’s not that far to New Jersey.

o-O-o

Westview is the epitome of small-town America, just like the sitcoms Wanda used to watch with her family back in Sokovia. 

She wonders whether Vision chose it because he remembered her stories of growing up on American shows, huddled with her family watching the picture-perfect worlds of beautiful families.  She wonders whether he had remembered her wistful wish that she had wanted that as a child; a wonderful home, neighbours who were friends, and a family. 

Wanda drives past the battered sign.  It looks as bruised and worn as she feels.  She knows many smaller towns in America have struggled; many of their populations just insufficient after the original snap to keep running.  She wants Westview to have survived intact, to be as picture-perfect as Vision had intended it.

Her hope starts to fade as she drives through the centre of town. 

It’s run-down.

Worn-out places.

Worn-out faces.

Isn’t that the way the song goes?

She starts to cast the people she sees into the roles they’d have in a sitcom, painting their lives into perfection than the reality of tired lines and slumped postures she’s sees as she drives by. 

The African-American man crossing the road would be their neighbour, maybe he’d head up the neighbourhood watch. 

A man stapling a notice to a board would be another friend. 

A mature woman sitting having coffee could be the boss’ wife and the food delivery guy, the ever-friendly postman. 

The fantasy of it sizzles in her head, red tingling at her fingertips.  She clenches them on the wheel and focuses on getting to her destination. 

It’s not what she is expecting.

She stares out of the car window.

The lot stands empty, bereft of anything but a flimsy fence and piles of bricks.  The concrete outline pokes up from the ground like a skeleton.

She breathes in, so shakily, aware it’s too close to a sob.

She draws out the deed and gets out anyway.  She walks to where the door of the house would be.  She can almost picture it in her mind; a wonderful front door, the door to her home with Vision.

Grief rushes over her, threatens to take her under once more.

She opens the deed.

‘To grow old in, V.’

She blows out a breath as she tries to hold back her tears.

She looks up and takes in the desolated spot.

There is no house.

No place for her to stay, to hide.

No place for her to grow old with Vision.

She walks inside.

She wonders if it was always empty.  All she feels is empty. 

She wonders if Vision intended them to build their home together, brick by brick.

She can picture it.

Their house.

Just like in the sitcoms she used to watch.

Perfect.

She wants it so badly.

But she’s never going to have it.

She’s never going to have Vision back.

She’s never going to have her family, their family.

She just wants him back.

She’s alone.  So alone.

The grief rolls over her and sends her to her knees, her power beginning to warm and bubble inside of her.

She just wants him back.

She just wants…

She just…

Grief crashes over her and takes her away.

Power rolls out of her, out of her control, out of her ability to do more than wish and want and hurt…

She can’t bear the nothingness around her anymore.

The house builds up from the ground.

But it’s not enough.

Because Vision isn’t there.

Another wave of grief takes her.

Her power rolls over the town, takes the worn-out places and faces of the mad world around her and replaces them with Wanda’s dream world where everything is picture-perfect.

Their minds fight hers, scream against the pain of her grief and she quietens them, replaces them with characters so they won’t know the truth, she sends the children to sleep…

She just wants Vision back…

Yellow energy erupts from her.  The mind stone.  The power which connected her and Vision…it’s like being ripped apart, grief pours out of her…

When it’s over, she’s standing in her house.

And Vision is there.

Vision is there.

She knows.

Deep down she knows it cannot be real.

But she wants.

She wants.

All she wants is to have him returned to her.

She just needs to take a step.

A step and her power sweeps over her, washes away reality. 

Where is she?

“Wanda,” Vision says wonderingly, “welcome home.”

Home.

He’s her home.

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

A heart on a calendar.

A heart drawn on a deed.  NO.  She’s never going to remember that.

She’s grateful for the distraction of Agnes.

A dinner party with his boss which makes them question their story.

Where did they come from?

The real world which Wanda doesn’t want to acknowledge exists.  She drowns out the memory again.  She doesn’t need to know; she doesn’t need to remember anything but this world.

When did they marry?

They’re not married; they never had time.  She shakes the thought away; of course, they’re married.

Where did they come from?

When did they marry?

Why don’t they know?

Wanda just wants Vision’s boss to stop asking questions. 

She just wants him to stop.

He starts choking.

Somehow Wanda knows it’s up to her whether he lives or he dies.

She tells Vision to save him and idly thinks that it’s time the boss stuck to his lines, to leave, to promise promotion. 

A few moments later, Wanda cuddles with Vision on the sofa.  They make up their anniversary, their song, their rings.  It doesn’t matter what they were, who they were before they came to Westview.  All that matters is now.

She wants their happy ever after.

Red power rolls over her as the credits finish rolling.

Maybe it’s time for a different scenario though, where their differences won’t matter so much to their friends and neighbours. 

Wasn’t there a sitcom about a witch?

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

It’s a model helicopter, bright red and gold, in her garden.

The colours remind her of something…a threat.

It’s Geraldine; a new face not quite fitting in just like Wanda.

Wanda wonders who she is but she doesn’t want to remember who she is never mind who Geraldine is.

It’s Dottie telling Wanda bluntly that she doesn’t trust Wanda not to hurt her, not even in this world where Wanda is trying so hard to fit in.

People don’t ever trust Wanda because of her power; they always fear her.  She just wants to fit in – is that so bad?

It’s a voice over the radio, Dottie asking questions.  “Who are you?”

She cannot answer; doesn’t want to answer.

It’s bright red blood on Dottie’s hand.  She wants to wash it away.  Dottie tells her how; do it herself.

The pageant is crazy, but they make it through; for the children.

Wanda just wants to fit in and they did.  They fit in and now they’ll have the perfect family.  She can picture it so clearly; a baby for her and Vision.

She’s pregnant.

Outside there’s a noise.

A man in a hazmat suit climbs out of the drain…

The threat outside trying to get in.

and – NO…

Wanda makes it so it didn’t happen.

She needs her child safe; she needs her powers. 

She can’t stay locked in this black and white world.

Colour seeps in – painting everything in vibrant reds, greens, yellows…

Wanda kisses Vision.

Everything will be alright.

They’ll be a perfect family.

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

It’s a pregnancy developing at super-speed.

She knows that is not normal.

It’s the doctor’s sly commentary about the intelligence of a woman.

That attitude is so out-dated, but she can’t remember why or when.

It’s Vision beginning to realise something is wrong – NO.

She just wants Vision back.

It’s the second baby when Vision claims their first as Tommy, and she so wants to give him Billy.

How did she magic up another baby?  How…

It’s the fact that she has twins.  She remembers she was a twin.  She had a brother.

Pietro dies and grief rushes through her like a wave.  Flashes of pain, falling to her knees because she feels so empty…like her heart has been ripped out of her body… 

Reality bites. 

“He was killed by Ultron,” Geraldine says.

Geraldine. 

Geraldine wears a symbol Wanda recognises from the model helicopter, from the hazmat suit. 

Geraldine is the threat and Wanda had allowed her in (she’d thought she’d sensed a grief like her own) but no more.  She pushes her out, out, OUT.

Why won’t they leave her alone?

Her hands sparkle with the red of her power. 

And she remembers just enough.

She knows she is truly Wanda Maximoff.

She knows she lost everything, and she just wanted a world where she had Vision, had the life Vision wanted for them.  She tries to focus on the twins, tries to bury reality again.

But Vision comes back and she sees the reality of him, dead and lifeless, before she turns away.

He knows something is wrong; offers to go wherever she wants, but she knows deep down that they can never leave Westview.  She tells him she has it under control.

She has it under control.

She just wants to keep her family safe.

She just wants her happy ever after.

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

It’s Agnes suddenly breaking character and asking to take it from the top and Vision knowing something is wrong no matter how much Wanda tries to get him to dismiss it as nothing.

It’s the twins suddenly growing up within a blink of an eye; once, then twice.

Agnes jokes about it but doesn’t notice the weirdness of it otherwise.

Or does she?

Vision is worried; she sends him to work as a distraction.

Wanda focuses on her children, on their antics with a dog (she really doesn’t understand where it came from).

Reality is another drone intruding into her world, trying to hurt her, trying to hurt her children.

Her whole world freezes.

Reality bites.

She is Wanda Maximoff.

She may not remember everything, but she remembers this: she has lost everything and she will not lose it again.

She drags the drone out, out, OUT.  Throws it back at them.  She’s not surprised they have guns on her.

“You can hardly blame us, Wanda,” the man in charge tells her before berating her for holding the town hostage.

That one lands like a blow.

She’s holding a town hostage?

Is she?  She doesn’t remember.  She didn’t mean to; doesn’t mean to hold them hostage.  How can that be true?  She doesn’t have that kind of power.

Wanda tells him to stay out of her home.

Geraldine tries to tell her that Wanda trusts her; knows her as an ally.  She tries to bargain with her. 

They have nothing she wants; she has everything she wants and she will protect Vision and her children.

She won’t lose them again and strengthens the barrier as she returns to the world she apparently has created.

But reality.

It is persistent.

The dog has died while she was gone.  Her boys beg her to bring it back from the dead.  She has to tell them the truth that there are some rules that cannot be broken.

But then how did she bring back Vision?  How is he alive?

Vision questions her.  He tells her that he broke one of the townspeople out of her mind control.  Mind control.  How is she controlling everyone?  She can’t be controlling everyone; she really doesn’t have that kind of power.

And Vision is so angry.

Why can’t he be content with her?  Why can’t he be content as her husband, as the father to their children?

She doesn’t know how it began.

The memory is there but she doesn’t want to look at it.

The doorbell rings.

Pietro.

But not.

She definitely didn’t do this.  Pietro is dead.  Isn’t he?

Pietro is dead.

Vision is alive. 

Vision is dead.

Why can’t Pietro be alive too?  Why not her brother? 

Even if he looks nothing like him; even though it’s as though he’s a completely different person.

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

Wanda really cannot remember how it all began.

Her brother isn’t her brother.  She doesn’t know who he is.  She wants to believe it’s him, but she can’t.  Not really.

Vision isn’t in sync with her anymore.  He makes plans without telling her.  He lies about it.

Herb asks if she wants anything changed.

She’s the one in control.

She’s holding him hostage. 

Her brother invites her confidences.  He knows the truth; faces her with it, asks her how she did it.  She tells him the truth.  She doesn’t remember; all she remembers is being alone, empty, with nothing.

There’s no judgement as he tells her she’s done the best she could with what’s done to mitigate the impact of her mind control; she’s kept families together, couple together, given them better lives, has let the children sleep.

That’s not Pietro.  Her brother was their conscience; he was the one who tempered Wanda not the other way around.

Whoever the man beside her is, he’s not her brother.

Vision almost dies, comes apart bit by bit as he tries to leave.  Why is he trying to leave?

She’s furious.

She’s hurt.

She’s…

She won’t lose him.

Not again.

Her power snaps out of her once more, sweeps over the world to make Vision safe again, to remove the threat outside once and for all.  This, this she does deliberately; making them a circus, making them clowns because that’s what they are.

Why won’t they leave her alone?

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

The cold light of day arrives between one blink of an eye and another, with the knowledge that she is responsible settles like a lead weight in Wanda’s belly.

She created a pocket world using Westview, moulded it into her favourite shows.  She’s cast townspeople into roles and changed the fabric of their reality.  She doesn’t know how.  She doesn’t remember how it happened.

She wants to hide under the covers.

She wants to hide just for one day.

She needs to work it out in her head.

Work it out in her head.

HAH!

Hasn’t she done enough damage?

She did this.

She created this world.

She still doesn’t know how it started, but she is responsible.  The man with the guns, the threat outside of her world, was right.  She is responsible and she’s holding a whole town full of people hostage. 

Who does that?

Who is she?

Her world isn’t real.  It’s meaningless.  Nothing is real.

She’s grateful Vision isn’t home yet.  She doesn’t know what she’d say to him.

She’s grateful when Agnes offers to take the boys.

She’s alone.

Alone to work out what has gone wrong and why she can’t fix it anymore.  Everything around her is glitching; wallpaper and lights and stairs and…everything.

Geraldine bursts into her life once more.

Not Geraldine.  What had she called herself over the drone?  Monica.

Her first instinct is anger.

She’s part of the threat.

Part of the outside trying to take away her world, to hurt Wanda and Vision and her boys…

But Monica surprises Wanda.  She has her own power.  She stands up to Wanda.  She tells Wanda she doesn’t have to be the villain.

But isn’t Wanda already the bad guy?  Holding a town hostage.  Good guys don’t do that.

Monica doesn’t stop.  She tells Wanda of her own grief, of losing the person closest to her, of pain and truth.

A truth hovers in the recesses of Wanda’s mind.  She knows she’s a step away from uncovering it.  But she doesn’t want to admit it though.  She cannot accept such a truth, cannot accept the pain.

Agnes rescues her, hustles her away.

Only Wanda realises her mistake moments later. 

Monica may not be her enemy. 

Agnes is definitely not her friend.

o-O-o

Reality.

It is persistent.

Particularly in the hands of a witch like Agatha Harkness. 

It’s magic runes on the walls around Wanda, making her powerless for the first time in years.

In hindsight Wanda can see how Agnes, Agatha, was constantly trying to get her to explain, to give away her secrets.

She’s scared to face the truth.

She’s not ready for the pain she’ll know it will bring her.

She just wants to be Vision’s wife; Billy and Tommy’s mother.

And that is the thought that sustains her as she walks through the door to her past; she needs to save her children.

Sokovia.

Her childhood seeps back into her mind like a wave retreating with the tide, leaving behind the debris of the ocean. 

They’d been loved.  She and Pietro had been so very loved by their parents.  They hadn’t much beyond the meagre contents of the small apartment they called home, but they had each other and that was all they had needed.

She wants to close her eyes at the shock of the bomb; at the horrifying memory of the bomb in front of her and her brother.

Agatha calls her a baby witch but…that can’t be right. 

Wanda’s not a witch.

The next door leads them to the part of her past she will always look back on with shame.

She’d joined Hydra.  She’d fallen for their lies.

She’d put herself forward to gain powers to destroy Stark, to destroy everything he’d ever built, including the Avengers.  She hadn’t thought about right or wrong; she’d just wanted him to hurt as much as she hurt.

This memory though…she has never been able to quite remember this.  Wanda has only ever remembered walking into the room and the stone in front of her and then…nothing.  She’d woken back in her cell of a room.

But here with Agatha, the memory is sharp and clear.  She sees everything.  She sees who she is; she sees her destiny.  She knows she accepted it, forgot it.  But she cannot forget anymore.

It’s not enough for Agatha.

They step back to Wanda’s time in the Avengers.  They step back into a time when Wanda was grieving so much for Pietro and already falling quietly in love with Vision.

Memories flood her once more.

“The only thing that would bring me comfort is seeing him again,” her past self tells Vision. 

All she had wanted was her brother back.

Her brother.

Not the fake Agatha had constructed for her.

Her grief for Pietro rushes through her once more…knocks her down again like the wave she talks about with Vision.

Her heart aches.

“But what is grief if not love persevering?” asks past Vision.

And Wanda cannot breathe as she remembers falling in love piece by piece despite herself.

All her moments with Vision flood through her, from the beginning to the end when Thanos had ripped the stone from him and taken everything from her.

It’s not how what happened at Westview started though.  There’s still a gap and Agatha forces her to relive it.

S.W.O.R.D.

Seeing Vision’s body, dismembered and in pieces. 

He hadn’t been there.

She couldn’t bring him back.

Couldn’t even say goodbye to him.

The empty lot.

Nothingness.

Alone.

Her grief overwhelming her, creating the world, reforming Vision from the power of the mind stone left inside of her.

She just wanted him back.

She’d just wanted her happy ever after in a perfect world like the sitcoms she’d watched as a child.

And now Wanda remembers everything.

o-O-o

There’s a fight.

There’s always a fight.

Agatha.

A Vision bleached white, brought back with his soul missing, his heart missing.

She finds out the most horrifying truth of all of it when the townspeople confront her and she realises what pain her grief has caused them; she tries to correct her mistake, tries to let them go.

She can undo this world she has created, but the undoing will mean losing her Vision, her boys.  She’s left devastated, bereft, even as Agatha challenges her again.

And then Hayward and his goons appear.

She leaves the boys to deal with them, knows her Vision will deal with Hayward’s ghost of her beloved.  She goes after Agatha.

Wanda was always a fast learner. 

Teleporting.

Fooling Agatha into thinking she’s stealing her magic.

Casting runes to protect her world from Agatha.

She’s never needed Agatha to tell her who she is; who she was always destined to be; who she’d accepted she would be when she’d accepted the mind stone’s power and the path it would set her upon.

The Scarlet Witch is a myth.

Wanda is Reality.

She wins.

She locks Agatha into the persona of Agnes. 

Vision looks at Wanda and she knows he knows; they know.  She has to undo the world she has created if she is to do the right thing.

They go home.

Wanda begins to reverse the world, pulling her power back from the edges of town. 

She only gets through the goodbye to her boys because Vision is beside her.  She tells them family is forever; they kiss the boys one last time.

Wanda aches with new grief, new loss.  She can hardly stand it.

Vision is beside her at the window.  They can see the red wave coming towards them. 

She tells him who he is; he is her love persevering.

And he gives her hope one last time before he disappears beneath her fingertips…

She’s left alone in the empty lot.

Her family gone.

Her happy ever after gone.

What is left is the truth of her grief and of her pain.

It’s time to leave.

o-O-o

Reality is her constant companion.

Her hands wrap around her mug as she sits down on the step of her cabin and stares out into the wilderness.  It’s a beautiful day.  Clear skies.  The air is fresh, scented with earth and the green of the grass and the forest.  If she listens carefully she can hear the babble of nearby water. 

Wanda is the only living human in a very large distance.  She won’t make the same mistake she’d made in Westview.  She’s emotionally compromised; her powers are unstable and she’s not completely in control of them.  She won’t risk anyone else getting hurt as she grieves.  She’s truly sorry for the pain she’d caused the townspeople of Westview.

She grieves for Vision twice-over now; the Vision she’d lost to Thanos, the one she’d conjured from her memories to marry.  She grieves anew for her boys.

There’s the familiar ache of loss for her parents, for Pietro.

Family is forever. 

Her mind flickers to her astral self, tucked away and learning in the back bedroom.  She’ll find a way back to her family.

“We’ve said goodbye before, so it stands to reason…”

“We’ll say hello again.”

fin.