RUBILYKSKOYE INBOX.

[explosion]

TELEPATHY • HOLOGRAM • LETTERS • DELIVERIES • ACTION

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

Comments

[explosion]

No.

[ Despite the Darkhold's teachings, Wanda can't quite place it. She didn't suck the magic out of her like Agatha had tried. That would've made it easier to get it back.

Wanda's grateful he doesn't offer her a card of sympathy. What she's surprised to detect is anger from him. (Is it anger? She wants it to be anger. She's angry. If Stephen is angry, then it feels like her anger is justified. He's the most level-headed person she knows.) ]

But I think I will need to kiss her ass to get it back. I don't know what kind of magic she has, and I don't think trying to will it back to me is going to work. This place is built from different magic to ours. Mine has never worked quite the same as it did on our universe or even eight-three-eight.

[rehandle]

[ A long, heavy silence as he processes that. What Wanda lacks in formal training she more than makes up for in raw, intrinsic, terrible power. To find her reduced to sucking up, to asking nicely...

It should be a relief. That there's somebody, anybody, anywhere who has an edge. But the check on the Scarlet Witch these days is Wanda herself, and Stephen is not relieved. He's pissed. ]

Do what you have to do. If it doesn't work, we'll find another way.

[ We, because who else? ]

[explosion]

[ She doesn't wish to cry, so she doesn't. But something warm flutters in her chest. How long has she allowed her fear of becoming the monster she was, the monster Stephen refuses to describe her as, to keep her wedging distance between them?

He's not the enemy. Stephen never was, even though he fit it so perfectly in the original draft of her script. ]

I don't want you to get in trouble because of me, Stephen.

[ While noble, it's not worth it. It feels like something that needs to be said. She wants to say it. ]

But I will— [ Poignantly adds - ] and we will.

[ Thank you. ]