Chapter 136: Paradox
2nd March 2006, New York City
(Jasmine Sayre POV)
I wasn’t in the mood to keep grading papers. I walk out to the parking lot to get some fresh air. But looking around, I sense something weird, something wrong. I follow its trail and find myself in front of a woman staring at me. She looked around thirty years old, with red hair. She was wearing a red leather suit with a crimson crown on her head. Her fingertips looked blackened, a form of corruption. The entire woman reeked of corruption, similar to a demon. I had to stop the instinct of attacking the woman on sight. After, all even if she looked different or older, I could recognize her anywhere.
I couldn’t help but murmur to myself, “Wanda, what have you done?”
I stand there, frozen as the older Wanda started running towards me. I could feel the world pulse, reality slowly tearing itself apart, with every step she took. I realized immediately that this wasn’t an alternate universe version of Wanda, but that of my daughter.
This was bad, this was really bad. This was a direct violation of the natural law. I had to repress my Master of Death persona so that I wouldn’t kill her on sight. But killing her will not change anything; her atoms will still exist, even if I disintegrate her. She needs to be erased from existence, to return where she came from.
I need to convince her to return, before it’s too late. With every breath she takes, she changes reality. Even a single molecule could change everything. She needs to return to the future right away.
I still need to stand frozen, as she runs towards me. She’s barely a few feet away, now. I snap out of my stupor, and cry out at her, “Wanda! You need to get back now. Get back before it’s too late.”
However, Wanda was hysterical, “Mom, I missed you so much.”
“Wanda, listen to me,” I insist, “go back. Go back, right away. Wanda please. You have to go back before it’s too late.”
Wanda didn’t seem to care and just embraced me, “Mom!”
The second she touched me, I felt reality shake and almost rupture. The universe had closed itself off and will soon start to look for the breach and erase it. There was no way for Wanda to return to her time now. It was too late. My daughter was dead, she just didn’t know it yet.
Slowly, a single tear came to my eye. I wasn’t going to tell her. Perhaps I should at least spend some time with her, until she’s gone. I relax; there was nothing I could do, now. Wanda has broken the rules of the universe itself, and the universe will answer her back.
I just hug her back. She seems to have had a bad time in the future. Seeing the corruption in her magic, how far had my daughter fallen. I could feel the Darkhold’s taint on her. It was very heavy; she must have used it intensively. So, I lost someone else to that damned book.
I let go of her, “Wanda, why are you here?”
“I just missed you. I lost you. I will never lose you again, mom.”
“Honey, I can tell that you went through a lot, but to do what you just did. Do you truly have no idea about the consequence of what you have just done?”
Wanda protested, “It was the only way. I tried everything. The time stone, I made Stark and Pym make me a time machine for me to use, I even tried finding you in another universe. It didn’t work, nothing worked. You were never there!”
I sigh, “Wanda, I do not exist in any other reality. I made the hypothesis when I was younger and confirmed it when I got older and was more knowledgeable about the multiverse.”
“And why is that?”
“Unlike the Phoenix Force, who chose to divide its power for each existing universe, Death is universal. It is singular, the end of everything, destruction incarnate. So, it only needs one champion, one Avatar. There can only be one of me. Normally that would be a problem because every possible choice in any universe creates a new multiverse, this reality is at the center of the multiverse, which means it has special properties, first of which is the fact that the choices one takes or doesn’t take doesn’t automatically create new universes. This universe will always be in the center, no matter what, and you can’t have a branch universe also be the core universe. This was the ideal place for the avatar of Death to exist, and so Death chose me from this dimension. It’s very complicated and I don’t have the time to properly explain everything, I’m not even sure I understand everything, really, but that’s the gist of it.”
Wanda looked thoughtful, “but I didn’t try to traverse to another universe, I wanted to return to this time.”
I sigh in exasperation, “Wanda, your question just showed me that you never understood chronomancy properly.”
At her look of protest and I interrupt her, “Don’t try to deny it. You used a branch of magic that you had no understanding of. You broke one of its core rules and perverted it to your means. Don’t deny it; I am the foremost expert in Chronomancy, I know what I’m talking about,” she looked down in shame at my words.
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I try to ignore the guilt at making her feel this way and continue, “When you go back in time, there are two options. You either stay in the same universe, in this case it means that you were always part of the events in that universe and this creates a time loop. But in the end, the future would remain the same. The other option would be to create a new branch of the universe where you arrived and you would live there. In the end, the original universe wouldn’t change, you would just disappear from there. And your life in the new universe would be in an entirely different universe.
“When you went back in time, you couldn’t stay in the same universe because you weren’t part of the events here in the first place, and you couldn’t find me in another universe since my existence is unique. From what I understand, you combined your reality magic and a chronomantic alchemical ritual where you sacrificed something powerful, probably the time stone, to be able to return to this exact same reality. I assume you modified a spell from the Darkhold to do this. As impressive as that is, you have no idea what you have just done and the ramifications of your actions.”
As I finish my lecture, Wanda was gaping at me, “That’s exactly what I did. How did you know that?”
“Because I have been tempted to do the same many times. It’s so easy to lose yourself in despair, in pain. But running away or trying to undo the past is the coward’s way. You have to accept that not everything always goes to plan, that the world is not perfect and move on. It’s not easy, nothing that matters ever is, but it’s the truth. What you did Wanda, how far you have fallen, it was wrong. I can assume that Stark and Pym weren’t willing to work in that little project and what you have used to force them.”
Wanda yelled out, “You do not understand, you can never understand. I lost everything. You were gone, Jean was dead, Kitty was dead, Pietro was dead. Everyone was dead and you were gone and I needed you. I was all alone, with no one to love, no one to care for. Everyone was so scared of me, of my powers. I needed you and you weren’t there. You just disappeared along, fighting some unknown threat while leaving me with the Avengers to fight for the stones. I have no idea what happened, but I never saw you again after that. But it’s not like you can understand my loss, it’s not like you’re human anyway.”
I answer back calmly, “I don’t understand. You call losing a couple of people suffering. I have lost so many people, so much family. I understand more than you realize. You needed to move on. It might have taken years for you to do, but you would have found other people to love. Death is what gives life meaning, in the end and in coming here, not only have you doomed yourself but have doomed the lives of every resident in your universe. Trillions of lives, in millions of worlds, lost, because you didn’t try to move on.”
Wanda looked pale, “What do you mean?”
“I told you, your actions have consequences. You came back to your previous reality and changed something. This was why I tried to tell you to return. You have irreversibly changed your past. Your world, the future, was permanently erased from existence by your actions. You have killed more people than even Thanos would have if he achieved your goal. And for what? For nothing at all! To try to stop a fight that I have known was coming for decades, a fight that I must have won considering that there was a world left for you to live in before you came back.”
Wanda gasped, “You knew, all this time, you knew about Thanos, about the stones!”
“Of course, I knew and have been preparing for years. Why do you think I let SHIELD be a thing while it was infiltrated by Hydra, why do you think I let the New York invasion happen in the first place? The world needed the Avengers, and a small taste of what was out there without too much casualties. You think your little spar with the mad Titan was the main problem. No, I could beat the guy in minutes, even while he’s wielding the gauntlet that he doesn’t even understand. No, someone was playing the long game; the infinity stones shouldn’t have been in the same galaxy cluster, let alone been on the same planet. Someone wants to use Thanos’ snap for something. So, I assume I sent you and the Avengers to fight Thanos while I tried to handle the actual Cosmic Threat. Had I lost, he would have ensured your defeat and let Thanos snap half the universe out of reality.”
Wanda looked shocked, eyes wide and mouth gaping at me, “Someone wanted to use the snap, how?”
I sigh, “Someone using all of the infinity stones at the same time would cause reality to shatter. Usually, it would heal, but for a fraction of a moment, the walls between the universes were gone. Considering that this universe is at the center of the multiverse, a supremely powerful being would be able to use it to alter reality on a multiversal scale. In going back, you have undone my effort and put existence itself at risk.”
Wanda was in tears and started babbling, “I’m sorry, alright. I’m sorry. I was so alone. I missed you so much. I needed you and wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Wanda, someone as old as me, understands that there is an end to everything. Death is a part of life. Nothing can have a beginning without an end. I have accepted death, long ago. Even if I died, considering what my sacrifice would achieve, I would do it gladly. But you didn’t even think that I could have survived, somehow. I could have been sealed away, or I could have been so weakened that I would have needed a few centuries to recuperate.”
Wanda kept babbling apologies and tears were streaming from her eyes, “How can I undo everything? How can I right my wrongs?”
“You can’t. If you had just returned to the future when I told you, you could have. But now, there is no going back. But that’s not the worst part. You have doomed me to watch my daughter suffer a fate worse than death before my eyes once more.”
“What?”
I start crying, “You are part of the paradox Wanda. You changed your own past, and twisted reality. The universe will start looking for you and erase you from existence. Your very presence is an anomaly. There is nothing that can be done, my daughter. It has already begun.”
I point towards her legs that were slowly glowing blue. They started to crack as if it was a shell, and the cracks started to fade away. She was slowly being erased from existence.
I looked at Wanda, she looked at me pleadingly, “Mom, I’m scared. I don’t want to go.”
“I know, Wanda. But don’t worry, I’ll stay with you, to the end. And the afterlife isn’t so bad, kiddo. I’ll see you again.”
Her eyes were so full of hope, “Really?”
Everything underneath her waist had faded, “Yes, really and one day, I’m going to join you and I’m going to tell you all about my adventures and you’ll tell me all about yours. I promise.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
I try to repress my tears, “I know. But before the end, I wanted to tell you that no matter the mistakes you made, no matter their consequences, I will always love you, Wanda.”
Wanda smiled at that. It was a smile full of happiness, so much so that it broke my heart. When my daughter had truly faded, I let out the wails I have been smothering. I had been lying to her, I was never going to see her again for she was being erased from existence, her soul included. She wasn’t going to have an afterlife. But at least, she died with a smile on her face. It didn’t make me feel any better though. I’ll deal with the consequences of what just happened later. For now, I wished to mourn my daughter in peace.