RUBILYKSKOYE INBOX.

[explosion]

TELEPATHY • HOLOGRAM • LETTERS • DELIVERIES • ACTION

✿ Rubi-telepathy (easy mode) feels different to ✦ Wanda-telepathy (hard mode).

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[explosion]

[ She takes his hand, sweeping her fingers along his palm as though she can feel the pulse of his lifelines. She looks at the underside of his delicate wrist. ]

I don't know. [ It's as honest of an answer she can give him. He's the only one who's gotten honesty from her so far. Wanda likes to project she's perfectly fine. It's how people prefer her to be: fine. ] I've felt this way for a long time.

[ Dramatic, she knows, but those waves she'd described to Vision so long ago still swirl around her. Sometimes, they're soft; sometimes, they're vicious. Despite how weird Gregory finds her, the waves are often at their softest around him. ]

The Void gave me what I wanted. [ She shrugs helplessly, peering up at him. ] I can give anyone anything they want. Why can't I have them?

[ Easy. Balance. They're no longer hers to have. ]

[unorthodoc]

[ The fact that she could do practically anything to him at this point -- knock him out, throw him across the square, change or obliterate him from existence with a wave of her hand -- doesn't phase House. He's been playing with risks like that for a long time, even before he came to Rubilykskoye. He goes through life sticking knives in electrical sockets. Danger isn't something he shies away from. If she's weird, they're weird together.

He looks down at her, sorrow softening the edges of his expression. He may not be able to give her those easy and comforting lies, but he can sympathise with that wanting. ]

Because life is tragically unfair. [ He lets her look at his hand. Then he reaches up with the spare, ghosts the backs of his fingers over her cheek, brushes a wayward curl of hair aside from her face and tucks it behind her ear. ]

Good people die. Bad people go on surviving. The universe takes, and it doesn't give back. You can't do this forever, Wanda. I know addiction when I see it. It's not something you can sustain forever.

[explosion]

[ Her face crumbles.

She's never considered it like that. Is it addiction? Wanda wonders what it is she's addicted to. It certainly can't be power—she didn't have this kind of juice when she was eleven and hiding under the bed. Can someone be addicted to feeling like the world is toppling over them again and again?

Without thinking, Wanda steps into him and wraps her arms around him and presses her cheek against his chest. He's not Vision—and he'll never be Vision; his voice is too gravely and his words are too sharp—but she likes that. ]

Sometimes I hate it here.

[ Reminders of what she's tried to escape keep infiltrating what should be a safe and protected bubble. ]

But I don't hate that you are here.

[unorthodoc]

[ There's no question over what he's going to do when she steps forward into his arms. House lets out a breath that's half sympathy and half relief and hugs her close, only a little clumsy for lack of practice at comforting people. He rests his chin lightly on top of her head. She seems small in his arms, too small to have changed the world. But he knows how these things work out. ]

The thing is, I don't hate that you're here either. Even when you turn everything into tomato soup.

[ He strokes a hand over her back, up and down. ]

If it helps, you're not the only one going crazy.