I sat alone in Natasha’s apartment. The lights were off but the TV was on, Netflix playing through season three of Orange Is the New Black. The volume was almost all the way down and I wasn’t really watching it at all—I just liked to have something playing in the background. It already felt a little sad to be sitting here by myself, drinking, and it’d be a lot worse if I was sitting entirely in the dark. The images flashing by on screen just did the bare minimum to draw my brain back into the present, letting me still actually process thoughts instead of just staring blankly ahead.
Two bottles of Teacher’s sat on the coffee table; one was completely empty and I’d made a start on the second. While the benefits of having taken the Heart-Shaped Herb far outweighed the negatives, it was still extremely disappointing that I was almost immune to mortal alcohol. In the memories I had from another life—now that I was removed from the situation, with the perspective I had on it all now—I was pretty sure I’d been a high-functioning alcoholic and I was really starting to miss being able to get drunk. Maybe I should try Everclear? I was pretty sure there was a 95 per cent version; that might work. I thought I was starting to feel a little bit of a buzz, but it was faint and I might have just been imagining it. I’d definitely have to see if I could get more of that Asgardian liquor once Thor got back. They had to have barrels of the stuff, right? Surely they could spare one.
With any luck, it wouldn’t take too long for the Asgardian prince to return with news on the Celestial front. I grimaced to myself, thinking about it. I’d realised a little while ago that I’d probably messed up a bit with the way I’d handled the whole Odin-Loki situation. When I’d first met with the Avengers, I’d held off on telling Thor about what his brother was up to—from his perspective, he’d watched Loki nobly sacrifice his life in a final glorious moment of redemption less than a year ago, and was still grieving his loss. I’d worried that he would respond poorly to me just immediately dumping the truth on him right away… ‘Oh, hey, by the way, your brother didn’t actually sacrifice himself, he’s just as much of a shit as ever’ had seemed like a tricky sell.
However, immediately after the successful mission to take down the Red Room had probably been the perfect time to tell him. The mission had pretty definitively established my credentials and earned me the benefit of the doubt with the Avengers. It had almost certainly been enough that Thor would have at least listened without getting angry at me for sullying the memory of his lost brother. I’d just been so distracted at the time, thanks to everything that was happening with Natasha, and by the time I remembered that I’d needed to tell him he’d already departed for Asgard.
When it came down to it, though, it was yet another thing that I didn’t actually need to rush on. There were still at least two full years before Ragnarök had occurred in the original timeline, so a couple of extra weeks or months with Odin in a retirement home was probably not going to make a big difference. It was still Thor’s personal, family business, so it wouldn’t really feel right trying to deal with it behind his back before he returned. I’d wait ‘til he got back, then broach the topic whenever it seemed appropriate. Thor might be a little annoyed that I’d held off on telling him about it, but still, I couldn’t imagine it would really matter in the long run. He might have even found out on his own by now, in any case—I’d given him lots of things to question ‘Odin’ about and, when it came down to it, Loki was kind of a terrible actor.
I was a little worried that Thor’s little excursion to Omnipotence City had been a wild goose chase, too. I still didn’t really have any other good ideas or answers when it came to dealing with the nascent Celestial that was growing within the Earth. The Emergence wouldn’t happen for another two or three years, so we still had plenty of time to come up with something, but it was harder to take the long view on something like that when we didn’t have any viable plans to deal with it. Maybe it would be worth reaching out to a couple of the Eternals, after all.
Ikaris would probably eventually be a problem no matter what, but the rest of the Eternals were basically just trying to live their lives in peace. I didn’t want to drag them into things if I didn’t have to but, when it came right down to it, their Uni-Mind was the only thing I knew for a fact could stop the Emergence. I just didn’t know how they’d react at this point. Ajak was the only one who knew the truth about their mission. The Blip—humanity being capable of something that saved half the universe—had been what had swayed her, the thing that had caused her to doubt their mission after millions of years. Without that happening, I had no idea what she or the others would do. A couple might side with us, but we couldn’t rely on most of them and, if it turned out they didn’t want to help, then alerting them to our plans to stop the Emergence risked having them become enemies instead.
Then again, I’d already thought several times about reaching out to Gilgamesh and Thena, living in their self-imposed exile in the Australian Outback. The Mahd Wy’ry that Thena suffered from was essentially a degenerative mental condition, with memories from former lives she’d led ‘leaking’ out into her conscious mind from where her creator had hidden them. I felt like I’d been getting steadily better at repairing damaged or controlled minds—I had no idea if an Eternal’s mind was similar enough to a human’s that I could help her, but if I could help her it would be a great way to open relations. Even if we didn’t go to them for help with the Emergence, they could still potentially prove to be powerful allies. I’d put it on the list; something to do in the next couple of weeks if Thor hadn’t returned by then.
Speaking of damaged minds… I still needed to fix Bucky. I was refreshing the wards keeping the Winter Soldier persona at bay every so often, but hadn’t quite worked out how to fully undo what was effectively decades of botched, amateur psychic surgery that HYDRA had wrought on his mind. Ironically, it seemed like the refined nature of something like the Red Room’s chemical control process had been easier for me to deal with than the mess that was going on in Bucky’s head was.
Or the mess that was going on in mine, for that matter. There was still so much else to do, but taking care of myself was the priority right now. Everything else could wait; there was nothing pressing that I needed to take action on anytime soon. I took a deep breath, making a deliberate effort to push it all out of my mind for now, then drained the rest of my glass and helped myself to another.
Pietro and I had spent a whole year at the mercy of HYDRA, undergoing invasive experimentation and their idea of ‘training’—brutal, endless exercises that had nearly broken me time and time again. Then we’d gone on the run from the Avengers, Kamar-taj had tried to banish me from the world, there’d been the mess in Wakanda… we finally eventually managed to sit down with the Avengers, but then there’d been barely any time to breathe before Eliza had fucked everything up. So much had happened.
Nat and Pietro were right. I’d run myself completely ragged. I hadn’t taken the time to really process any of what had happened to me—what was still happening to me. I was making mistakes. I was always, always, always rushing around. What I really needed to do right now was slow down. Take some time to get my head on straight. Not everything needed to be a crisis. I had time. I had so much time. I just needed to start acting like it.
I still had no idea who or what I was. At first, I’d thought I was someone else, another mind that had been dropped into Wanda’s body. Okay. Isekai. Transmigration. These were things I understood, even if the ‘how’ or ‘why’ eluded me. Then, it turned out that my soul was actually identical to Wanda’s. Pietro told me that I’d been acting like Wanda the whole time. I started to recall bits and pieces of my memories from before HYDRA. Okay, so there was still Wanda in me, or I was Wanda and had just been given memories from elsewhere, or whatever. That was fine, that had still made some sort of sense.
But then, more recently, I’d started to remember bits and pieces from the original Wanda’s life, from her perspective, that hadn’t even happened in this timeline. I remembered using my magic to tear apart Ultron’s drones, fighting through Novi Grad to stop him and ripping his heart out when Pietro had died. I remembered falling in love with Vision. I remembered him dying. I remembered my children—Billy and Tommy—and I remembered losing them, as well. I could feel the ragged holes that their absences had left inside me. What did that mean? How was that possible? I had no clues, nothing even pointing at a direction that might lead me to answers.
I needed to understand my magic better, too, but I had no idea what the best way to do that was. I wished that Kamar‑taj wasn’t still so inaccessible to me—I didn’t really know anywhere else I could learn about witchcraft. The Ancient One had said our truce still stood, but being willing to work with us to stop Eliza and Kaecilius was vastly different to being willing to provide me with tools that would actively empower me. Even if she wasn’t as worried about me as a threat from another world anymore, I was still the Scarlet Witch and she knew the prophecies about me as well as anyone.
The Hex I’d created in Wakanda was even more of a flawed mess than what had happened at Westview in the original timeline and I didn’t know why. I wanted to try again, but I didn’t even know where to start understanding what I’d done wrong or how to do better next time.
Westview. God, even thinking about it was painful.
Then again, if I was remembering things from the original timeline—if I did have some connection to that version of myself—then maybe that was my clue? My lead? Fighting Eliza had triggered memories of Ultron. There was the familiarity I felt at the Avengers compound. If I was really serious about working through my issues, maybe this was a potential avenue to better understanding of what had happened to me? If I paid a visit to Westview, it might also kickstart some memories about the Hex and what I might need to fully awaken my chaos magic. To harness my full potential as the Scarlet Witch.
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I bit my lip. Part of me rebelled at the idea; I really, really didn’t want to go to Westview. Knowing my luck, the place would just be a fucked-up minefield of bad memories.
If I did go, it would almost definitely be bad idea to do it by myself. Part of me didn’t want to bother anyone with this. This was just me sorting through my shit. I didn’t want to be any more of a burden then I already was. But part of being better about my issues was remembering that I had people who cared about me. Nat had directly told me to ask for her help if I needed it. If I decided to go, without asking for support, and something bad happened… No. I couldn’t do that. I’d talk to Nat and Pietro. Plan a trip for sometime next week, maybe, and ask if they’d come with me. After I’d had at least a little bit of time to process and relax.
The sound of hurried footsteps outside the apartment, followed by someone running into the front door hard enough to shake it in its frame, suddenly roused me from my thoughts. I rose to my feet, facing toward the door, instinctively calling wisps of chaos magic to my hands. After a brief struggle with the door, Yelena burst into the apartment, slamming the door behind her before leaning back against it, practically gasping for air. After a brief second, she looked over and saw me—our eyes met and she froze. She swallowed, trying and failing to get her breathing under control. “Hey,” she said, with poorly feigned nonchalance.
“…Hi?” I responded hesitantly, hands still held at the ready. “What’s going on?”
She didn’t respond right away, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. “…What?” she asked after a moment, as if there was no possible reason anything would be currently going on right now.
My eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What did you do?”
Yelena straightened up, double-checking that the door was locked behind her, then took a few steps forward, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. “Nothing.”
“I thought the Red Room trained better liars. What did you do?”
“Nobody died!” she said, a little defensively.
I dropped my hands to my sides, letting the magic I’d conjured dissipate. “What kind of an answer is that?!”
Yelena finally spied the bottles of alcohol in front of me, an unrecognisable, fleeting expression flickering across her face as she glanced around the dark apartment. “Were you just drinking by yourself in here?”
“No, no, no, you don’t get to just change the subject.”
She ignored me, stepped briefly over to the kitchen to retrieve another glass before returning and plopping down heavily on the couch. “This is my bed, you know,” she said, a little petulantly. “I don’t go around sitting on your bed when you’re not here.” She grabbed my bottle of scotch and helped herself to what looked like a triple, knocking the whole thing back in a single gulp, grimacing slightly as she swallowed and letting out a vaguely pained sigh.
I sat back down next to her. “Sure, Yelena, you can have some of my scotch,” I said, my tone sending a little petulance right back at her.
“Don’t mind if I do.” She refilled her glass.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“No. It’s fine. Nothing important.” She hesitated for a moment. “Nothing you need to worry about, at least,” she amended. She twisted on the couch, bringing one of her legs up under herself so she could face me properly. She motioned to the alcohol bottles. “What have you been doing?”
“Just… thinking,” I said.
“Thinking about what?”
“Oh, you know. The horrors.”
Yelena blinked. “…and by ‘horrors’ you mean?”
I smirked and shook my head. I supposed that uncertainty was fair. Given my ‘visions’, I very well could have actually meant that literally. “Just life. Everything that’s happened. Stuff that still needs to happen.”
“Right. The horrors. Hilarious.”
“You make jokes sometimes, too, you know,” I said wryly.
“Yes, but my jokes are good jokes, because I have things like self-respect. And dignity.” She gestured vaguely toward me. “Things you are clearly not burdened with.”
That made me chuckle. “Fair.”
Yelena grinned back, eyes glinting with the reflected light of the TV. “Seriously. What’s up?”
On the TV in front of us, Laura Prepon pinned a blonde woman to the floor as they started angrily making out. “You know,” I said, my attention held briefly by the scene. “I’ve never actually watched this show properly. Maybe I should.”
“Ugh, что только я для тебя не делаю.”
“Natasha asked you to keep an eye on me, didn’t she?”
Yelena paused, tilting her head to one side and weighing my expression. “She did. But that’s not why I’m asking,” she said, shaking her head. “I still owe you, too. A little.”
I reached out, grabbing the bottle of scotch. I poured myself another glass, then leant over to top up Yelena’s as well before clinking them together.
--
“So then Eliza impaled me on her sword-hand, like, right through here.” I tapped the middle of my torso. “And lifted me up into the air like a shish kabob.”
“No, but that wouldn’t work,” Yelena argued, scrunching up her face and shaking her head. Her words weren’t slurred, exactly, but her accent was coming out a lot thicker than usual. “Your body weight would pull you down and it’d cut you in half.” She reached over, poking me in the spot I had indicated with a finger, then swiped it upwards demonstratively, making a cutting sound with her mouth as she flicked over a quick path up my chest, through my collarbone and out my shoulder.
“Yeah, but she did something,” I countered. “Reconfigured her arm inside me so that that wouldn’t happen, so she could monologue some more before she killed me.”
“Why? That’s dumb. You’re both dumb. She could have just killed you with the sword that she was literally already stabbing you with.”
“She could have. I mean, she was using some pretty…” I paused briefly, trying to keep a straight face, “…cutting-edge technology.”
Yelena groaned and threw her head back against the couch dramatically. “Why are you like this? You could be literally any other way.”
“The more visceral a reaction I provoke from you, the more it nourishes me,” I teased.
“I need another drink.”
I obliged her with a grin. We’d already polished off what had been left of my second bottle of scotch and had moved on to a third. “But yeah, when she was talking, I managed to slap her with Wanda-3. She went down and… that was it. Done.”
“I still think there had to have been a better way to do things. Creating another AI was a huge risk.”
“Eh. It worked, didn’t it?” I rubbed at my formerly-severed fingers absently. “I’ve actually been vaguely thinking about maybe getting a tattoo,” I said. Yelena side-eyed me, her expression flat, as though she couldn’t tell whether I was joking or not. “…What?”
She shifted position, letting out a small, involuntary grunt of effort as she straightened up and looked at me seriously. “You’re not also going to try cutting your own bangs, right?”
I snorted. “It’s not like that. To memorialise Wanda-3, I mean. She didn’t have a body to bury or anything like that. It doesn’t feel like there’s any closure there; I don’t really have anything physical to remember her by and I’d really like to. Remember her, that is.”
“I mean… I guess that sounds like it could be a good idea?” Yelena said uncertainly, slightly listing to one side.
“Oh. That reminds me, I really need to check with Bucky and make sure he’s actually going to therapy still.”
Yelena let out a soft snort of amusement. “What about you? Shouldn’t you be in therapy?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve tried therapy before. It didn’t suit me,” I said, shaking my head. I tilted my glass in her direction. “What about you? You’ve got plenty of your own trauma to unpack.”
“The Stark Foundation has a support group for ex-Widows. I went once or twice.” She grimaced, then shot me a wry smile. “It didn’t suit me.”
“What, then?”
“What, what?”
“What are you, you know, doing? You go out a lot but I don’t know what you’ve been up to.”
Yelena frowned. “I don’t know, really,” she confessed. “It’s hard, you know? I’ve never had to decide what to do with myself before. I’ve just been… around. I don’t really know what I want.”
“No one really starts out knowing exactly what they want out of life. You missed out on a lot of time because of the Red Room—time you’d normally have had to work things out a bit,” I said, taking another swig of alcohol. “Have you thought about joining the Avengers? They’d take you in a heartbeat, I think.”
She pulled a face. “Ugh. No. I don’t want to be a fancy hero on kids’ lunchboxes. That’s Natasha’s world.”
“I understand wanting something for yourself, but don’t knock it ‘til you try it.” I leaned over to nudge her with my shoulder. “Nat’s a little bit fixated on being an Avenger. She still feels so much guilt over all the things she did when she was with the Red Room and, for her, it’s a way of making up for things. Uh, not that I think either of you should feel guilty or have anything to make up for. None of that was your fault. All I mean is… she’s an Avenger because she wants to do something good with her life. At least, that’s how it started. They’re her family now, just as much as you are. Family’s important. Speaking of—”
“If you ask me about Alexei I will punch you,” Yelena interrupted me.
“Things going that well, huh?” I let out a small laugh. “Fair enough.”
There were a few moments of companionable silence before she spoke again. “…Maybe I should get a tattoo.”
I perked up, beaming at her. “A symbol of asserting ownership over your own body, after having it controlled by someone else for so long. Yes! I love it.” My eyes widened as a thought occurred to me. “We could get tattoos together! I mean, like, not the same tattoo, obviously, but we could go together. If you wanted to, I mean.”
Yelena chuckled, shaking her head. “You’re suck a dork.”
I stood up and started to pace, prowling restlessly back and forth in front of the couch. “What’s the time?”
“We are not going to go get drunk tattoos at…” she checked her phone. “Eleven thirty at night.”
“Not that,” I shook my head. “It’s still early. We should go out. Oh! We could go do karaoke!”
Yelena shot me a flat look. “I am not doing karaoke.”
Reaching down, I took her by her wrist, hauled her to her feet, and started steering her toward the door. “Come on!”
“This is unfair!” Yelena protested, struggling not to laugh as I pushed at her, disbelief warring with amusement in her tone as she barely managed to put her glass down on the table before I moved her past it. “I’m drunk and you’re unreasonably strong!”
I bulldozed over her objections, insistently prodding her toward the door. Yelena complained the whole way, but, even so, less than twenty minutes later she was right next to me, belting out Don McLean’s American Pie at the top of her lungs.
It ended up being a pretty good night.