( a voice — almost like a french accent, but not quite, something alien about it — issues forth from the blue sending crystal that wanda was issued upon arrival, low and feminine: )
This is... ( someone is consulting her notes. ) Wanda Maximoff?
( huh. the name is a strange coincidence, but wanda maximoff is a rifter, not an elf, so she sets it aside. )
My name is Captain Gwenaëlle Baudin, I understand you're new to Forces.
[ It's only a matter of time until she's discovered—although if Wanda wanted to be hidden, she's certain that she would've succeeded in it. She knows who Gwenaëlle Baudin is. It's important to know the cast of characters she suspects will feature quite frequently in her character-centric episodes.
She responds with a perfect American accent - ]
I am.
[ Tone warm, too. Friendly, open—everything that she needs to be to be someone who is approachable and likeable. ]
If I'm receiving a call from the captain, does this mean I'm in trouble? I promise I put everything back where I found it.
( the brief pause really isn't Wanda's fault. neither is the incrementally more reserved tone that follows, )
No, you're not, ( but Gwenaëlle is, momentarily, thrown by the unintended mirror of a recent, difficult conversation.
it's not an auspicious start (probably there's a version of this conversation where she says something funny about it being the commander when she's in trouble and they laugh and it's very smooth), but this can't possibly go as badly as that. )
It's only record keeping. Did you arrive with any particularly exciting weaponry, what do you typically need in the field, is there anything specific you need for training, sparring, etcetera.
Any questions you might have about the guard duty roster, as well. You'll be on shifts with someone more familiar to start, to get to know it.
[ If she were responsible like Steve, she'd inform Captain Baudin that she is the weapon she arrived with. But she's not responsible like Steve, and she doesn't want to label herself so soon. She's just a simple girl who fell asleep under rubble and woke up here. This is a fresh start. ]
I don't like guns.
[ Do they even have guns here? Does it matter? It answers a question she needs a few moments to mull over. ]
I have some experience with sparring, but… I'm not the best. Do Forces offer that? Hand-to-hand? Weapons training? Ways to outsmart a punching bag that's bigger and heavier than me? I know how to hold my fist for a punch, but I've been told I hold my weight all wrong.
[ This is supposed to be endearing. To Wanda's ears, she sounds like she doesn't belong in this division. ]
( to gwenaëlle's, too; her increasing dubiousness about this person is audible, even as her answer comes measured and polite. )
Ouais, that can be provided. You understand that you've specifically signed up for your physical skills and combat to be the basis of majority of your work?
( like. just to be clear. she could not sound less endeared, but she is definitely trying to give wanda the benefit of the doubt, a handhold in the conversation— presumably there's some reason she chose forces over the alternatives.
most things and people are bigger and heavier than gwenaëlle; she's less concerned about that than the way wanda is talking to her now. )
[ Perhaps she's playing her cards too close to her chest. Hadn't she been informed magic was a no-no here? She is magic. But if she were assigned a task as part of Forces, wouldn't she eventually reveal what she's been hiding?
It'd been easier with the Avengers. She spent most of her time in New York under house arrest while everyone else led the missions and roped her in when they needed the manpower. She was always a guest star. She was never a key player.
She weighs up the potential consequences. ]
I can move things with my mind.
[ Her heart may pound, but Wanda's voice comes out strong, unwavering. Her fear is hidden. What's another world that hates her? (Too much.) ]
I've always relied on it. Throwing punches is not my specialty, but I would hope that someone in Forces could teach me how. I've had some training.
[ But one of her trainers is dead, and the other is an old man too content with his happily ever after to return to what he used to be to her. Wanda is displaced, and she has no idea how to navigate it. Forces had been the best path forward: it sounded familiar. (The name sounded on par with The Avengers.) ]
I used to be part of a team. This is what I know best.
[ WandaVision proved she'd be amazing in research. ]
( if the endearing patter and easy friendliness had put her off, equally the straightforwardness (and the caution she can read into one after the other) sets her more at ease— )
Good, ( is matter of fact and instantly more amiable, ) that's what we need.
( the team part, mainly, but as for the rest: )
It sounds like we might make good training partners on the physical side of things; I'm slight, so it's about speed and agility, not brute strength. Our previous two Commanders trained me, and I had to retrain one of them, long story. We can probably work something out with your, what's the word— télékinésie, if you want to practise to account for however it's likely changed from where you were to here, which I would recommend because finding out in battle sounds like a clusterfuck.
( the voice of someone intimately familiar with rifters and their unique challenges, to be sure— )
No one's tossed things at me to see if my shield can block them for a while. I'm not a mage, myself, but my anchor-shard has certain abilities that aren't the norm. Shield barrier included.
[ Perhaps we should be glad there appear to be no car dealerships in Thedas. ]
You'd trust me to use my power on you? [ Not with. Wanda's learned from in the field that it's always on or against. That's how the media likes to portray her power usage, after all. Better to lean into it. ] You don't know me.
[ There's no accusation in her voice. Incredulity, yes. She's open to it, of course—someone wishing to participate with her is enough to have her consent, but… It's not common. Even the Avengers had approached her trepidatiously back in the day. She's used to the fear. ]
With me, ( is an easy correction. she's not the telepath; she doesn't, can't know what wanda's thinking, or the context in which it lives. what she does know is that the entire point of all of this is that they are all working together,
and: )
No one twisted your arm behind your back and made you join. If you had decided to sit down and sulk, then you still would have been provided with a roof over your head, food at mealtimes, and the protection that living within these walls affords. You've been dropped into a shit situation without so much as a by your leave, in the process leaving behind probably everything you knew prior, and you've chosen to do this work.
I'm doing you the courtesy I do everyone here of assuming that you did that because you want to do the work. If you're going to take the opportunity in front of you and piss it away that soon in turning on everyone around you, ( her tone doesn't change at all because it isn't accusation so much as imagine how goddamn absurd that would be, ) it would be incredibly poorly calculated to do it in the middle of the training yard.
( and then, laced with dry humour: )
You haven't been here long enough to want to take a crack at me. Give it time.
[ She makes an amused noise. Gwen reminds her of Sam, although Sam's way of relating to others was through dad jokes and snorting at said jokes. She ignores the ache such a thought prompts. ]
The last time I was recruited into anything, it wasn't like I had much choice.
[ She's considered her words and what she risks by sharing this information. She has nothing to lose. Who are the Avengers here, if not a group with a stupid name? ]
They kept me in my room, afraid of me. [ Not entirely the truth, but it became it in the end, didn't it? ] I guess I expected that would happen here, too.
[ But — ]
I'll use my power with you. I may even let you get a few hits in before I embarrass you in front of everyone.
[ Her tone is teasing. She's trying this out, this whole… being a comrade thing. How long has she been alone? How has it ruined her ability to simply banter and—well, trust is the beast waiting around the corner, isn't it? ]
( gwenaëlle always finds it a little bit funnier to let people just find out what she can do, which is itself a milder form of her inclination never to make any threat she might want to act on. )
To your first point, you've more or less described what being a mage was like for the last, I don't know, several centuries. You might find more understanding here than you're accustomed to. I won't pretend to you that the reception won't be varied outside of the Gallows — there'll be as many that just objectify you in new and annoying ways as are frightened — but we're the problem children. You're in fine company.
( like, the commander of forces is a really cool war criminal. )
[ from the sending crystal comes a high, feminine voice with a generic british accent: ]
Messere Maximoff? I'm Ennaris Tavane, Quartermaster. I handle distribution of inventory and quarters assignments, I can show you to your room and make sure you're outfitted with everything you need to perform your new duties.
I'm also a Rifter myself, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about this world. I took quite a few notes, when I first arrived.
[ "Rifter". Interesting word; she needs to get used to it. (It's better than "weird" and "witch (derogatory)".
Generic British accent, meet a generic American one, a little too perfect, perhaps, for anyone with a sharp ear for it. (Her tone is warm, open, and very much inclined with the character notes of likeable newbie.) ]
You can call me Wanda, if you prefer.
[ Although she does quite like "Messere"! ]
What's the one question you wanted to ask but didn't because you felt it was too weird?
[ ness's experience with generic american accents is pretty limited; wanda is immediately noted as "not from anywhere familiar". that's alright; the people she's met who have generic american accents have been fairly lovely, on balance. ]
What do you prefer, Messere? That matters more than what I do.
[ as a consummate people pleaser, she's very familiar with the importance of phrasing and reading into requests. "if you prefer" is a far cry from "i would like it if".
the question stumps her, obvious in the way it takes her a few moments to say something. ]
I don't generally refrain from asking questions, no matter what I worry others may think of them—I simply wait to find someone I think will receive the question well. I've found that our Seneschal, Enchanter Julius, does not mind my questions, nor do Head Healer Strange or Captain Baudin. The Seneschal and the Captain are both natives, but the Healer is a Rifter, and all together they can provide a fairly comprehensive view of whatever you may wish to inquire to, in my experience.
Edited (typing on an ipad is balls!!!) 2024-09-20 16:57 (UTC)
[ Head Healer Strange. Although he's already confirmed his status in Thedas, it's still so strange to hear Strange has taken a role that is… so perfectly dully him. Who else would be better to be the lead doctor than the surgeon with an ego as big as McSteamy's? At least he isn't acting out of character. She'd be more concerned about this Earth if he weren't taking on too much.
She thinks to ask her what she makes of Head Healer Strange. Is he trustworthy? Does he speak of those from home? Does he speak of home? But asking those questions means she's worried—and she intends not to worry. A Wanda who worries is a Wanda who makes a mess, and Strange is not her obstacle here. She is. ]
No one has called me 'Messere' before. Maybe you can call me 'Messere Wanda', Ennaris Tavane.
How long have you been here, if you don't mind me asking?
Ah, [ perhaps she's still unaware of the forms of address here–that makes sense, ness had to get used to them too. ] Messere is the polite form of address, here, like—well, in my previous life, it would have been goodsir or goodlady. Sir or ma'am also would have been acceptable, but here Ser is reserved for those who hold a knighthood.
[ isn't she so helpful and informative and not at all a weird walking wikipedia? ]
I can certainly call you Messere Wanda, if that's what you prefer! You can call me Ennaris, or Ness, if the full name is a mouthful. I've been here...
[ it hasn't been so long that she should stumble like this, but in ness's defense she hit the ground running and hasn't paused to let herself breathe, even for a moment. ]
Two months, I believe, or thereabouts. [ a pause, and then, gently, just in case, ] You get used to it. The people are mostly kind, and the work is meaningful. I miss my previous life, but I am not, so far, unhappy here.
[ She wasn't. (Was she? She tells herself she wasn't concerned. This is her second multiversal rodeo. Isn't she a cowboy by now?) She smiles. Does it come through, making her words sound like a tease? She thinks so. It's better to appear like that than for her to be taken too seriously. Wanda doesn't want to answer specific questions. ]
Do you anticipate you'll be unhappy, Ness?
[ Ness. It feels like she hasn't earned calling her by a shortened name, but Wanda tries it for flavour. It doesn't sound bad, speaking to another. ]
Won't we all, someday? That is the nature of life, after all.
[ it is not, ness knows, strictly an answer to the question as it was asked. she hedges as a matter of habit, and less out of reluctance than difficulty knowing where to begin with anything more direct. they are at war, corypheus threatens the world, circles remain dangling over all their heads like a knife—this is not so simple a question.
some answers are easier, though. she can start with them. ]
More specifically, should Corypheus prove victorious, I don't believe anyone would truly end up happy in his world, not even his Venatori. So I may end up unhappy then.
[ she smiles, though, the picture of optimism. ]
I don't wallow in that possibility, though. We will defeat him, and that future won't come to pass. Whatever unhappiness lies in my future, it will be mundane, and fleeting. Hardly apocalyptic.
[ Hardly apocalyptic. Wanda wishes she could look at a glass and see it as half-full again. She used to, once. Now, she sees the glass and its cracks, and how the water is slowly slipping through the fissures while others may not notice.
But Ness deserves a Wanda who isn't beaten down by… everything. ]
I like how you view things. [ It's said kindly, and she means it. ] How do you remind yourself to be happy when things feel… not so happy?
[ How does someone like Ness pick herself up? She's someone Wanda would consider naive, but… perhaps she needs that naivety to help her get through this universe. ]
[ she doesn't mind, based on the considering hum she gives to indicate that she's thinking on the question—but she doesn't know how to answer easily, either. it takes a moment for ness to have an answer formulated that she's happy with. ]
I'm alive, [ she says, soft with a bit of wonder, like that wasn't a given, ] against all odds. I'm here, surrounded by heroes, contributing tangibly to the most noble cause I can imagine.
[ it probably sounds like a bunch of bullshit—too lofty and altruistic to possibly be true. ness presses ahead even so. ]
Whatever makes me unhappy, whatever personal annoyances I experience—I can change them. I have time and ability, and anything is possible with the correct application of both. Happiness is inevitable, then, on the long scale of the universe. So why not choose it now, if I can?
[ there are things that hurt too badly for happiness to be a choice, of course. ness is no stranger to those. but when she can choose, when it comes to the things she feels softly enough to make that choice...
He could lie; he could say that he only just learned about her arrival and hared here as soon as he could.
But just as Wanda doesn’t pretend over their shared history, Stephen doesn’t want to lie to her either. (He owes her that much, does he not?) So even if it might tip his hand and make him look cowardly, avoidant, he admits:
“A couple hours. They don’t know yet that I know you from before, but— I’m the Head Healer here.” He adds, rueful, “We’re supposed to be doing an intake interview where I talk to you about quarantine and get your medical history.”
This, too, likely feels so familiar from the Stephen Strange that she knew: of course the man can’t help but meddle, take up a mantle of responsibility, stay busy and contributing. He can never leave well enough alone.
Her smile is small, amused, and her tone is warm, like a friend: "You can't help but put your fingers in pies, can you?"
It doesn't matter to her if that's not the saying. She doesn't need to be perfectly American in front of him. Perhaps it's a blessing, given that she can drop her guard slightly. (Is that what she can do with him? All she can feel is hers growing thicker. This truce-like thing that exists between them will only last for so long.)
Wanda looks away from him. "You could've sent someone else, you know." Her Slavic and American accents waver, shifting together, like they're fighting for dominance. "I wouldn't have been offended when I found out you wished to avoid me. A little hurt, maybe," she confides with a shrug, "but I would have understood."
She's dangerous. She tried to kill him. But what he admits to her is something she isn't quite certain how to handle.
They don’t know yet that I know you from before.
Smacking her lips softly, she stares at the shelves in front of her. From her periphrals, she watches him. "Are you going to tell them?"
“Of course. There’s few enough of us here; it’ll be nice to have someone around who knows what Häagen-Dazs or the Blip is without being told.”
But that isn’t exactly what she’s asking, and he knows it; he’s deflecting with humour, as usual. Stephen chews it over for a moment, before finally setting his papers down on the library table so he’s not still clutching them like some frazzled undergrad.
“The exact context, however, depends on you.” How had he asked Loki something like this? Any remaining megalomaniacal impulses? Any lingering animosity towards Avengers-shaped heroes? It’s not that Wanda ever wanted something like conquering the world, though, which is the whole problem to begin with —
“I don’t know how much you’ve been told yet about theories on our nature as rifters, metaphysically. But it needs to be said: physically, literally, we’re not the selves that we remember. It’s not like myself and America physically coming over through a portal, or your and my consciousnesses possessing our other bodies in other worlds.”
Said so plainly and matter-of-factly, as if he’s referring back to a field trip they did together. He’s worked very hard on preparing that steadiness in his voice to be able to talk about this. (It took two hours.)
“We’re more like Fade-crafted spirits, echoes of our original selves; our bodies were made here, and belong here. Hypothetically, even if we were able to leave, I suspect it would cause another incursion.”
Bottom line: there’s no going home. They’re trapped in this pen together. No more multiversal chase scenes.
Her body is where she left it. Is this a true fresh start, or a poor joke of one?
Will he inform Riftwatch that she's a flight risk? Will he tell the people he's come to work alongside that she's a danger to everything that they're facing? That she can upend plans, even when she doesn't mean to? Casting Strange in the role of Tony Stark is unfair. She's certain if Strange wanted to, he would have already.
Perhaps she needs to meet him halfway and leave her need to be suspicious and needle behind her.
"That's why I feel different," she says, glancing down at her hands. While she's been informed of the nature of Rifters, hearing him reiterate it means it's true. Would Strange lie to her? She doubts he's capable. Isn't his whole medical schtick based on an oath to always tell the truth? "I used to be able to feel everything. I would always have to make a conscious effort to turn everyone off. But here…" With a purse of her lips, she looks up at him. "Here, it's turned off for me."
Wanda has never known what silence was like before the Mind Stone and certainly not after.
"Do you know what it's like to finally hear silence?"
Good, he thinks, with a little stab of relief; the rifts have done some of the legwork for him, in helping her to believe, in hopefully not chewing off her own leg hoping to leave and find her children again. Because it’s true: their bodies feel different, their abilities dampened and tamped-down like a doused flame, a raging inferno dialled down to embers. Wanda isn’t immersed in chaos magic anymore and he’s not tapped into the heartbeat of the multiverse anymore. Their claws dulled, and thank god for it, in certain cases —
“I’m assuming you don’t mean the quiet of a farmstead in the countryside,” Stephen says dryly; and it might sound like a nudge at the secluded cabin he found her in, and it sort of is, but it’s also his childhood. He grew up in the quiet, the silence. Chattering cicadas. Wind in the fields. Until he moved to the city, which would’ve been a deafening roar for a telepath like her.
“Not the way you mean it.” There’s a beat. Intellectual curiosity muscles its way to the forefront, past his wary suspicion and distrust, his lingering fear, to ask: “Is it a reprieve? That silence.”
She weighs her answer and its potential ramifications, although she ensures it appears like she's mulling it over for the first time. Informing Strange of how she feels in Thedas is not something she approaches lightly. Offering this to him means she can see how he wields it. Are his defences still high? Will it come with another threat about a lunch box? Will he believe she isn't here to rip apart this world to find her children again?
She longs for them, but she mostly wishes for what home used to be. A crackling television where bumping its stand meant the antennas lost their signal. A blanket draped over a hole in the wall her father used to store her cassettes. Pietro's shoes left all over the floor for her to trip over and steal.
"It is."
And it's the truth. He'll be able to read it in her expression when she peers up at him.
She possesses no desire to silence those around her, not that she ever would in the first place. She doesn't need to be careful in understanding what thought belongs to her and what is another's. While she'd grown skilled in manoeuvring through that landmine, a new universe means new bombs to look out for.
She extends her legs out before her and moves her feet from side to side, a childish little thing.
Wanda Maximoff’s loneliness, Stephen reminds himself, is not his problem to fix. Even if there’s another unexpected little ache, a sliver of glass in his chest, thinking of what could have been. She’d been his first thought, back in New York. He had wanted to go to her for help. A teammate, a friend. He had vanishingly few of those.
The multiverse is massive and sprawling, and somewhere, maybe they—
He cuts himself off from that line of thought. Wanda’s good at controlling her presentation, and he notes it with his usual wariness: potential manipulation. He’s still standing next to the table, and already tall at six-feet; she’s still sitting on the floor with her back against the stacks, having to tilt her chin to look up at him. Seeming smaller. Diminished. Purposeful, he’s sure. Look: I have no claws. You want to help me.
He thinks of Ennaris and her telepathic abilities, but he’s not about to give away someone else’s secret, and surely the Scarlet Witch would rankle at the prospect of training with him. She’d never needed it before.
He does wonder, though: “You say it’s turned off. Can you still read minds at all? If you try? I’m not asking out of threat assessment, I’m asking out of curiosity.”
But he is asking out of threat assessment. Stephen Strange would be an idiot not to. It hardly matters to her if it's not the primary reason why he asks now; he's always planning a few steps ahead just in case.
It's why he would never fit with The Avengers. As much as she adores Steve, he thrived in being reactive, not proactive. Stark, too.
Wanda lets it go. If he's to meet her halfway, she will join him. Resting her head against the shelves, she doesn't look away from him. She won't grow defensive unless given a reason to.
"I haven't tried here."
That sounds recklessly silly, doesn't it? But—
"People seem very friendly," she says, drawing her brows together. Yes, it's a strange concept. Westview had been similar, but she wrote that off as it simply being how she characterised the town. Aren't all the people in Stars Hollow in each other's business and overly familiar? "They've given me information without me needing to say anything."
Briefly resting her hand beneath her chin, she jokes, "Apparently I have a very friendly face." He's not the only one who can lean on humour.
The corner of his mouth flickers. It’s not an outright smile, more of a small muscle spasm, but at least it’s the memory of a smile. (They had, once upon a time, talked and joked and it had felt comfortable. Not strained, not the way they’re now searching for multiple layers and nested motives. But at least he’s not trapping her in mirror dimensions and she’s not trying to rip his entrails out so, hey, that’s progress.)
“Riftwatch is efficient; its members won’t spare time for fools, but you’re not a fool, so they’ll be friendly and collaborative for the most part. The locals are… less so. They’re very mistrustful of magic, and to a certain extent, rifters.” The two of them are in the same boat in that regard.
But can she or can’t she read minds? That’s the question. And it’s a huge risk to leave it unanswered. Stephen’s presumably the only person in all of Thedas who knows what Wanda Maximoff was once capable of, and therefore so far the only person she can discuss this without preamble.
So he considers. It’s curiosity and risk assessment. Where would she sit on the blood magic scale, to an untrained local eye?
Stephen makes a decision.
This is atrocious, he hates to do it, to bare his throat to someone who could so efficiently tear it out, but after another moment he pulls up one of the chairs and sits down at the library table. Literally meeting her halfway. “Try me,” he says. His voice is a little stiff, expression still guarded, but: “Better than you first doing it accidentally on some baker down in Kirkwall market.”
At least this is with permission. Consent. (Trust, or the fledgling beginnings of it.) So, with that, Stephen consciously lets his mental barriers drop: the ones he had learned to put up against demonic possession, against her; he goes against every last self-protective instinct and opens his mind to Wanda instead.
Wanda stares at him with a crinkled brow. He moves, and she sits still. She often liked to mimic those around her, consciously and unconsciously parroting their movements in real-time. It's how she learned to walk with confidence, like Pietro, and hold her coffee, like Natasha. It's how she perfected her American accent, and even worked on her Brooklyn one while listening and echoing Steve.
She doesn't try to mimic Strange now.
Is it a trap? Would accepting this invitation prove to him that she is still a danger to those around her? If she accepts, he can— What? Inform everyone he invited her to read his mind, she did, and therefore conclude she is evil? Strange is not a storyteller. He reads bodies; he understands the fundamentals from textbooks and experience of cutting people open. He is nothing like her when it comes to weaving great tales that could be real.
Wanda doesn't get up from where she sits, not wishing to spook him.
She doesn't know why she does it. Lifting her hand, she curls her fingers into her palm but her index and middle, and presses those two against her temple as she looks at him. Her eyes don't glow red; she isn't interested in puppeteering him. It's meant to be akin to skating along the surface of a thick layer of ice.
She's too nervous. She doesn't approach it with the ease she's used to. But there's resistance that isn't in the form of any mental barrier he's erected. What was once a seamless slither feels like trudging through a thick bog. But Wanda persists.
He's afraid. Wanda doesn't need telepathy to know that.
This isn’t the easy, unthinking process it once had been, where she would’ve been able to play him like a harp back home. Her fingers needling through his mind like flicking through a filing cabinet, pulling out slivers of thought and memory.
And he’s still fearful and guarded, which makes it a little more difficult. The shape of Thedas itself rebels against this, making all magic harder, more purposeful: you have to fight for it. Press harder. Her weight leaning on the ice, which creaks underfoot,
and Stephen exhales a shaky breath, noticing that he’s started clenching his jaw, and has to remind himself to relax again. The door opens a little wider, and he lets her in.
It’s still surface-level, but Wanda catches those glimpses of Stephen’s rapid-fire thoughts as they skim past her:
They’re in the library, home to Mobius and his filing system, which reminds him— Stephen has a book on Orlesian botany that he probably needs to return soon,
There’s that stack of forms on the table beside him, the medical questionnaire she still needs to fill out,
(wary relief at a familiar face, at her death not being on his conscience after all)
Wonder which division she’ll pick —
And at least Provost Stark isn’t here anymore to complicate matters even further. Small favours.
Who worries about returning a book? Wanda rolls her eyes and lets him guide her, although the process is much more difficult than she remembers. It's like walking through skating without blades on her shoes. She isn't quite certain if she's moving at all. Is he even reaching for her? Is she even slipping beyond the surface?
The cracks are thick enough to slide through. The ice beneath her feet falls. But the water around her is far too icy. This used to be seamless; it used to feel like flying. His mind should feel like a blank piece of paper for her to scribble upon.
Her right temple thumps. Wanda ignores it. Hadn't she done that before, a long time ago? Instead of a dimly lit and well-stocked library, it had been the dull, grey prison of HYDRA.
She disallows its entrance and focuses on Stephen. She lets his thoughts roll over her, but they feel sharp. All her efforts push back on her mind wishing to take over, to find something normal, to ensure that this isn't a trick by Strange—
She slams the door on Stark. Sharp throbbing pounds behind her eye. Wanda glares at him, feeling…
"No," she snaps. "Not him."
Attending his funeral hadn't been her choice, nor did it bring her closure. She doesn't wish for him to haunt her here, either. Not now. Not when Stephen Strange is trying to trust her, and she him.
It’s a shock to the system, Wanda sinking into all the nooks and crannies and crevices of his mind and then having to abruptly yank herself back out in a rush, messy, the door slamming shut behind her, retreating too quickly; is there such a thing as telepathic decompression sickness? The bends. Her right temple thumps, and his left temple throbs. Stephen pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Sorry,” he says, apologetic in a way he isn’t often with people; it was the exact thing he hadn’t wanted to dredge up out of his subconscious around her, but that’s the whole trouble, isn’t it? Don’t think of pink elephants.
“You’ll probably— you’ll see his name all over the various Riftwatch paperwork and reports. He used to be here, too. He’s gone now.”
He keeps his voice as steady as he can, stripped of emotion and whatever hard-to-pin feeling he might have about that himself. Information. This is simply passing on relevant information.
Speaking of Tony Stark is the equivalent of shoving her finger into a gaping wound and keeping it open. It's never going to heal. Even with him dead, she will never be able to move on from what he is inadvertently responsible for. Not even here, in another universe. Is this what Agatha would consider karma? Is this what she deserves after Westview and Earth-838?
Perhaps.
She inhales deeply through her nose, still frowning. Her anger burns; the fear and uncertainty she has buried down since arriving in Thedas threatens to rise to the surface. Wanda wishes to lash out.
She takes a moment. One. Two. Three. Doesn't quite calm, but it's a good enough effort.
"Are you sad about that?" It's a snap, even though she doesn't intend it to be. Does Strange feel sad at the loss of Stark? (Would he feel saddened by the loss of her if she were to disappear from this place? Such a ridiculous thought. He should be relieved, just as she is she won't stumble into Stark's ghost.)
Stephen exhales again, slow. Still feeling a little discombobulated by her presence, the ghosting memory of her fingers in his skull.
It’s too big a can of worms to open when she’s a walking talking can of worms herself. Tony had been a strained colleague, eventually maybe a friend after a year in Thedas. Someone he’d once led to their death. He thought he’d done the same with her. He can’t get into it. So—
“I don’t know that it matters,” Stephen says instead, his voice mild, her snap ricocheting off that carefully-honed neutrality. It’s not the place or time to discuss his feelings with Wanda Maximoff, when he abhors having them at all, and would prefer to neatly sidestep them. “But I’m here. You’re here. That’s what we’re working with. Which reminds me—”
And then, perhaps it’s a distraction and another deflection from the wounds between them, or maybe he just remembered what he was supposed to be doing, but he picks up the piece of paper he brought with him and frisbees it in Wanda’s direction with the flick of a wrist. It drifts over, to be snatched up at ease: a blank questionnaire.
He denies her the opportunity to be angry about… what? A man who she's seemingly missed bumping into in Thedas. Isn't it a blessing that Stark is gone? The last person she wishes to see is him. (The last being she wishes to see is Ultron.)
Gently taking the paper from the air, Wanda holds it with both hands and frowns at it. A… questionnaire.
A questionnaire.
The last time she filled one of these out— Is almost every little thing between them going to throw her back into the past? She doesn't wish to think of HYDRA. She doesn't want to remember how she had been poked and prodded on the Raft.
She exhales softly to release the tension building within her. Wanda doesn't lift her gaze. "What will you do with this information?" There's no bite to her soft bark. Her uncertainty is warranted; she doesn't wish to be seen as another experiment.
“I’m Head Healer here,” Stephen repeats, matter-of-fact. He’s finding his stride again, mustering his composure back into place as he rediscovers familiar footing; this sort of intake, he has done before. He has a frame of reference for this, unlike the daunting uncharted territory of Wanda herself. (Here be dragons.)
“The records were a bit of a shambles when I first took over. Mostly it’s to avoid any truly stupid accidents: what if the Gallows kitchens prepared a dinner with nuts, and one of our number died to an allergy? They don’t have EpiPens here. If someone has chronic migraines that they might need regular painkillers for, that’s good to know for keeping track of stockpiling and inventory. And so on, and so on. Everyday purposes.”
It’s boring and banal and not nefarious, in short.
“It’s useful to simply have it for reference. So, case in point: are you allergic to tree nuts, Wanda Maximoff?”
[ Early-ish in the morning, very soon after Wanda's out of quarantine: ]
Hey. You the new rifter? [ The voice is young, but gruff. Could just be someone who doesn't like mornings! (It's not, though, she loves mornings and she sounds like this all the time.) ]
[ It's the bright red hair, isn't it? Wanda suspected she wouldn't be able to lay low for long—not that she intended to. She wished to observe and ask questions, figure out if Thedas knew of her (they didn't seem to), and figure out how to blend in.
This was a chance to do that, the whole blending in thing.
Glancing at his hand, she smiles and places hers in it. Leaning forward, her smile turns teasing - ]
[What began as a friendly handshake turns into a somewhat uncomfortable one, Benedict's hand stilling in place, though he doesn't exactly rip it from hers.]
--no, [he says quietly, a bit uneasily] I wanted to know how you're settling in.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crystal, first.
This is... ( someone is consulting her notes. ) Wanda Maximoff?
( huh. the name is a strange coincidence, but wanda maximoff is a rifter, not an elf, so she sets it aside. )
My name is Captain Gwenaëlle Baudin, I understand you're new to Forces.
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She responds with a perfect American accent - ]
I am.
[ Tone warm, too. Friendly, open—everything that she needs to be to be someone who is approachable and likeable. ]
If I'm receiving a call from the captain, does this mean I'm in trouble? I promise I put everything back where I found it.
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No, you're not, ( but Gwenaëlle is, momentarily, thrown by the unintended mirror of a recent, difficult conversation.
it's not an auspicious start (probably there's a version of this conversation where she says something funny about it being the commander when she's in trouble and they laugh and it's very smooth), but this can't possibly go as badly as that. )
It's only record keeping. Did you arrive with any particularly exciting weaponry, what do you typically need in the field, is there anything specific you need for training, sparring, etcetera.
Any questions you might have about the guard duty roster, as well. You'll be on shifts with someone more familiar to start, to get to know it.
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I don't like guns.
[ Do they even have guns here? Does it matter? It answers a question she needs a few moments to mull over. ]
I have some experience with sparring, but… I'm not the best. Do Forces offer that? Hand-to-hand? Weapons training? Ways to outsmart a punching bag that's bigger and heavier than me? I know how to hold my fist for a punch, but I've been told I hold my weight all wrong.
[ This is supposed to be endearing. To Wanda's ears, she sounds like she doesn't belong in this division. ]
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Ouais, that can be provided. You understand that you've specifically signed up for your physical skills and combat to be the basis of majority of your work?
( like. just to be clear. she could not sound less endeared, but she is definitely trying to give wanda the benefit of the doubt, a handhold in the conversation— presumably there's some reason she chose forces over the alternatives.
most things and people are bigger and heavier than gwenaëlle; she's less concerned about that than the way wanda is talking to her now. )
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It'd been easier with the Avengers. She spent most of her time in New York under house arrest while everyone else led the missions and roped her in when they needed the manpower. She was always a guest star. She was never a key player.
She weighs up the potential consequences. ]
I can move things with my mind.
[ Her heart may pound, but Wanda's voice comes out strong, unwavering. Her fear is hidden. What's another world that hates her? (Too much.) ]
I've always relied on it. Throwing punches is not my specialty, but I would hope that someone in Forces could teach me how. I've had some training.
[ But one of her trainers is dead, and the other is an old man too content with his happily ever after to return to what he used to be to her. Wanda is displaced, and she has no idea how to navigate it. Forces had been the best path forward: it sounded familiar. (The name sounded on par with The Avengers.) ]
I used to be part of a team. This is what I know best.
[ WandaVision proved she'd be amazing in research. ]
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Good, ( is matter of fact and instantly more amiable, ) that's what we need.
( the team part, mainly, but as for the rest: )
It sounds like we might make good training partners on the physical side of things; I'm slight, so it's about speed and agility, not brute strength. Our previous two Commanders trained me, and I had to retrain one of them, long story. We can probably work something out with your, what's the word— télékinésie, if you want to practise to account for however it's likely changed from where you were to here, which I would recommend because finding out in battle sounds like a clusterfuck.
( the voice of someone intimately familiar with rifters and their unique challenges, to be sure— )
No one's tossed things at me to see if my shield can block them for a while. I'm not a mage, myself, but my anchor-shard has certain abilities that aren't the norm. Shield barrier included.
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You'd trust me to use my power on you? [ Not with. Wanda's learned from in the field that it's always on or against. That's how the media likes to portray her power usage, after all. Better to lean into it. ] You don't know me.
[ There's no accusation in her voice. Incredulity, yes. She's open to it, of course—someone wishing to participate with her is enough to have her consent, but… It's not common. Even the Avengers had approached her trepidatiously back in the day. She's used to the fear. ]
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and: )
No one twisted your arm behind your back and made you join. If you had decided to sit down and sulk, then you still would have been provided with a roof over your head, food at mealtimes, and the protection that living within these walls affords. You've been dropped into a shit situation without so much as a by your leave, in the process leaving behind probably everything you knew prior, and you've chosen to do this work.
I'm doing you the courtesy I do everyone here of assuming that you did that because you want to do the work. If you're going to take the opportunity in front of you and piss it away that soon in turning on everyone around you, ( her tone doesn't change at all because it isn't accusation so much as imagine how goddamn absurd that would be, ) it would be incredibly poorly calculated to do it in the middle of the training yard.
( and then, laced with dry humour: )
You haven't been here long enough to want to take a crack at me. Give it time.
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The last time I was recruited into anything, it wasn't like I had much choice.
[ She's considered her words and what she risks by sharing this information. She has nothing to lose. Who are the Avengers here, if not a group with a stupid name? ]
They kept me in my room, afraid of me. [ Not entirely the truth, but it became it in the end, didn't it? ] I guess I expected that would happen here, too.
[ But — ]
I'll use my power with you. I may even let you get a few hits in before I embarrass you in front of everyone.
[ Her tone is teasing. She's trying this out, this whole… being a comrade thing. How long has she been alone? How has it ruined her ability to simply banter and—well, trust is the beast waiting around the corner, isn't it? ]
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( gwenaëlle always finds it a little bit funnier to let people just find out what she can do, which is itself a milder form of her inclination never to make any threat she might want to act on. )
To your first point, you've more or less described what being a mage was like for the last, I don't know, several centuries. You might find more understanding here than you're accustomed to. I won't pretend to you that the reception won't be varied outside of the Gallows — there'll be as many that just objectify you in new and annoying ways as are frightened — but we're the problem children. You're in fine company.
( like, the commander of forces is a really cool war criminal. )
crystal; second.
[ from the sending crystal comes a high, feminine voice with a generic british accent: ]
Messere Maximoff? I'm Ennaris Tavane, Quartermaster. I handle distribution of inventory and quarters assignments, I can show you to your room and make sure you're outfitted with everything you need to perform your new duties.
I'm also a Rifter myself, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about this world. I took quite a few notes, when I first arrived.
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Generic British accent, meet a generic American one, a little too perfect, perhaps, for anyone with a sharp ear for it. (Her tone is warm, open, and very much inclined with the character notes of likeable newbie.) ]
You can call me Wanda, if you prefer.
[ Although she does quite like "Messere"! ]
What's the one question you wanted to ask but didn't because you felt it was too weird?
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[ ness's experience with generic american accents is pretty limited; wanda is immediately noted as "not from anywhere familiar". that's alright; the people she's met who have generic american accents have been fairly lovely, on balance. ]
What do you prefer, Messere? That matters more than what I do.
[ as a consummate people pleaser, she's very familiar with the importance of phrasing and reading into requests. "if you prefer" is a far cry from "i would like it if".
the question stumps her, obvious in the way it takes her a few moments to say something. ]
I don't generally refrain from asking questions, no matter what I worry others may think of them—I simply wait to find someone I think will receive the question well. I've found that our Seneschal, Enchanter Julius, does not mind my questions, nor do Head Healer Strange or Captain Baudin. The Seneschal and the Captain are both natives, but the Healer is a Rifter, and all together they can provide a fairly comprehensive view of whatever you may wish to inquire to, in my experience.
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She thinks to ask her what she makes of Head Healer Strange. Is he trustworthy? Does he speak of those from home? Does he speak of home? But asking those questions means she's worried—and she intends not to worry. A Wanda who worries is a Wanda who makes a mess, and Strange is not her obstacle here. She is. ]
No one has called me 'Messere' before. Maybe you can call me 'Messere Wanda', Ennaris Tavane.
How long have you been here, if you don't mind me asking?
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Ah, [ perhaps she's still unaware of the forms of address here–that makes sense, ness had to get used to them too. ] Messere is the polite form of address, here, like—well, in my previous life, it would have been goodsir or goodlady. Sir or ma'am also would have been acceptable, but here Ser is reserved for those who hold a knighthood.
[ isn't she so helpful and informative and not at all a weird walking wikipedia? ]
I can certainly call you Messere Wanda, if that's what you prefer! You can call me Ennaris, or Ness, if the full name is a mouthful. I've been here...
[ it hasn't been so long that she should stumble like this, but in ness's defense she hit the ground running and hasn't paused to let herself breathe, even for a moment. ]
Two months, I believe, or thereabouts. [ a pause, and then, gently, just in case, ] You get used to it. The people are mostly kind, and the work is meaningful. I miss my previous life, but I am not, so far, unhappy here.
In case you had concerns.
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[ She wasn't. (Was she? She tells herself she wasn't concerned. This is her second multiversal rodeo. Isn't she a cowboy by now?) She smiles. Does it come through, making her words sound like a tease? She thinks so. It's better to appear like that than for her to be taken too seriously. Wanda doesn't want to answer specific questions. ]
Do you anticipate you'll be unhappy, Ness?
[ Ness. It feels like she hasn't earned calling her by a shortened name, but Wanda tries it for flavour. It doesn't sound bad, speaking to another. ]
a million gomens, feel free to drop!
[ it is not, ness knows, strictly an answer to the question as it was asked. she hedges as a matter of habit, and less out of reluctance than difficulty knowing where to begin with anything more direct. they are at war, corypheus threatens the world, circles remain dangling over all their heads like a knife—this is not so simple a question.
some answers are easier, though. she can start with them. ]
More specifically, should Corypheus prove victorious, I don't believe anyone would truly end up happy in his world, not even his Venatori. So I may end up unhappy then.
[ she smiles, though, the picture of optimism. ]
I don't wallow in that possibility, though. We will defeat him, and that future won't come to pass. Whatever unhappiness lies in my future, it will be mundane, and fleeting. Hardly apocalyptic.
sorry, my dude; i got blipped!
But Ness deserves a Wanda who isn't beaten down by… everything. ]
I like how you view things. [ It's said kindly, and she means it. ] How do you remind yourself to be happy when things feel… not so happy?
[ How does someone like Ness pick herself up? She's someone Wanda would consider naive, but… perhaps she needs that naivety to help her get through this universe. ]
If you don't mind a stranger asking.
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I'm alive, [ she says, soft with a bit of wonder, like that wasn't a given, ] against all odds. I'm here, surrounded by heroes, contributing tangibly to the most noble cause I can imagine.
[ it probably sounds like a bunch of bullshit—too lofty and altruistic to possibly be true. ness presses ahead even so. ]
Whatever makes me unhappy, whatever personal annoyances I experience—I can change them. I have time and ability, and anything is possible with the correct application of both. Happiness is inevitable, then, on the long scale of the universe. So why not choose it now, if I can?
[ there are things that hurt too badly for happiness to be a choice, of course. ness is no stranger to those. but when she can choose, when it comes to the things she feels softly enough to make that choice...
why not make it? ]
action, third.
( continued from. )
He could lie; he could say that he only just learned about her arrival and hared here as soon as he could.
But just as Wanda doesn’t pretend over their shared history, Stephen doesn’t want to lie to her either. (He owes her that much, does he not?) So even if it might tip his hand and make him look cowardly, avoidant, he admits:
“A couple hours. They don’t know yet that I know you from before, but— I’m the Head Healer here.” He adds, rueful, “We’re supposed to be doing an intake interview where I talk to you about quarantine and get your medical history.”
This, too, likely feels so familiar from the Stephen Strange that she knew: of course the man can’t help but meddle, take up a mantle of responsibility, stay busy and contributing. He can never leave well enough alone.
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It doesn't matter to her if that's not the saying. She doesn't need to be perfectly American in front of him. Perhaps it's a blessing, given that she can drop her guard slightly. (Is that what she can do with him? All she can feel is hers growing thicker. This truce-like thing that exists between them will only last for so long.)
Wanda looks away from him. "You could've sent someone else, you know." Her Slavic and American accents waver, shifting together, like they're fighting for dominance. "I wouldn't have been offended when I found out you wished to avoid me. A little hurt, maybe," she confides with a shrug, "but I would have understood."
She's dangerous. She tried to kill him. But what he admits to her is something she isn't quite certain how to handle.
They don’t know yet that I know you from before.
Smacking her lips softly, she stares at the shelves in front of her. From her periphrals, she watches him. "Are you going to tell them?"
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But that isn’t exactly what she’s asking, and he knows it; he’s deflecting with humour, as usual. Stephen chews it over for a moment, before finally setting his papers down on the library table so he’s not still clutching them like some frazzled undergrad.
“The exact context, however, depends on you.” How had he asked Loki something like this? Any remaining megalomaniacal impulses? Any lingering animosity towards Avengers-shaped heroes? It’s not that Wanda ever wanted something like conquering the world, though, which is the whole problem to begin with —
“I don’t know how much you’ve been told yet about theories on our nature as rifters, metaphysically. But it needs to be said: physically, literally, we’re not the selves that we remember. It’s not like myself and America physically coming over through a portal, or your and my consciousnesses possessing our other bodies in other worlds.”
Said so plainly and matter-of-factly, as if he’s referring back to a field trip they did together. He’s worked very hard on preparing that steadiness in his voice to be able to talk about this. (It took two hours.)
“We’re more like Fade-crafted spirits, echoes of our original selves; our bodies were made here, and belong here. Hypothetically, even if we were able to leave, I suspect it would cause another incursion.”
Bottom line: there’s no going home. They’re trapped in this pen together. No more multiversal chase scenes.
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Will he inform Riftwatch that she's a flight risk? Will he tell the people he's come to work alongside that she's a danger to everything that they're facing? That she can upend plans, even when she doesn't mean to? Casting Strange in the role of Tony Stark is unfair. She's certain if Strange wanted to, he would have already.
Perhaps she needs to meet him halfway and leave her need to be suspicious and needle behind her.
"That's why I feel different," she says, glancing down at her hands. While she's been informed of the nature of Rifters, hearing him reiterate it means it's true. Would Strange lie to her? She doubts he's capable. Isn't his whole medical schtick based on an oath to always tell the truth? "I used to be able to feel everything. I would always have to make a conscious effort to turn everyone off. But here…" With a purse of her lips, she looks up at him. "Here, it's turned off for me."
Wanda has never known what silence was like before the Mind Stone and certainly not after.
"Do you know what it's like to finally hear silence?"
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“I’m assuming you don’t mean the quiet of a farmstead in the countryside,” Stephen says dryly; and it might sound like a nudge at the secluded cabin he found her in, and it sort of is, but it’s also his childhood. He grew up in the quiet, the silence. Chattering cicadas. Wind in the fields. Until he moved to the city, which would’ve been a deafening roar for a telepath like her.
“Not the way you mean it.” There’s a beat. Intellectual curiosity muscles its way to the forefront, past his wary suspicion and distrust, his lingering fear, to ask: “Is it a reprieve? That silence.”
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She longs for them, but she mostly wishes for what home used to be. A crackling television where bumping its stand meant the antennas lost their signal. A blanket draped over a hole in the wall her father used to store her cassettes. Pietro's shoes left all over the floor for her to trip over and steal.
"It is."
And it's the truth. He'll be able to read it in her expression when she peers up at him.
She possesses no desire to silence those around her, not that she ever would in the first place. She doesn't need to be careful in understanding what thought belongs to her and what is another's. While she'd grown skilled in manoeuvring through that landmine, a new universe means new bombs to look out for.
She extends her legs out before her and moves her feet from side to side, a childish little thing.
"It's lonely, too."
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Wanda Maximoff’s loneliness, Stephen reminds himself, is not his problem to fix. Even if there’s another unexpected little ache, a sliver of glass in his chest, thinking of what could have been. She’d been his first thought, back in New York. He had wanted to go to her for help. A teammate, a friend. He had vanishingly few of those.
The multiverse is massive and sprawling, and somewhere, maybe they—
He cuts himself off from that line of thought. Wanda’s good at controlling her presentation, and he notes it with his usual wariness: potential manipulation. He’s still standing next to the table, and already tall at six-feet; she’s still sitting on the floor with her back against the stacks, having to tilt her chin to look up at him. Seeming smaller. Diminished. Purposeful, he’s sure. Look: I have no claws. You want to help me.
He thinks of Ennaris and her telepathic abilities, but he’s not about to give away someone else’s secret, and surely the Scarlet Witch would rankle at the prospect of training with him. She’d never needed it before.
He does wonder, though: “You say it’s turned off. Can you still read minds at all? If you try? I’m not asking out of threat assessment, I’m asking out of curiosity.”
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It's why he would never fit with The Avengers. As much as she adores Steve, he thrived in being reactive, not proactive. Stark, too.
Wanda lets it go. If he's to meet her halfway, she will join him. Resting her head against the shelves, she doesn't look away from him. She won't grow defensive unless given a reason to.
"I haven't tried here."
That sounds recklessly silly, doesn't it? But—
"People seem very friendly," she says, drawing her brows together. Yes, it's a strange concept. Westview had been similar, but she wrote that off as it simply being how she characterised the town. Aren't all the people in Stars Hollow in each other's business and overly familiar? "They've given me information without me needing to say anything."
Briefly resting her hand beneath her chin, she jokes, "Apparently I have a very friendly face." He's not the only one who can lean on humour.
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“Riftwatch is efficient; its members won’t spare time for fools, but you’re not a fool, so they’ll be friendly and collaborative for the most part. The locals are… less so. They’re very mistrustful of magic, and to a certain extent, rifters.” The two of them are in the same boat in that regard.
But can she or can’t she read minds? That’s the question. And it’s a huge risk to leave it unanswered. Stephen’s presumably the only person in all of Thedas who knows what Wanda Maximoff was once capable of, and therefore so far the only person she can discuss this without preamble.
So he considers. It’s curiosity and risk assessment. Where would she sit on the blood magic scale, to an untrained local eye?
Stephen makes a decision.
This is atrocious, he hates to do it, to bare his throat to someone who could so efficiently tear it out, but after another moment he pulls up one of the chairs and sits down at the library table. Literally meeting her halfway. “Try me,” he says. His voice is a little stiff, expression still guarded, but: “Better than you first doing it accidentally on some baker down in Kirkwall market.”
At least this is with permission. Consent. (Trust, or the fledgling beginnings of it.) So, with that, Stephen consciously lets his mental barriers drop: the ones he had learned to put up against demonic possession, against her; he goes against every last self-protective instinct and opens his mind to Wanda instead.
A door, cracked ajar.
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She doesn't try to mimic Strange now.
Is it a trap? Would accepting this invitation prove to him that she is still a danger to those around her? If she accepts, he can— What? Inform everyone he invited her to read his mind, she did, and therefore conclude she is evil? Strange is not a storyteller. He reads bodies; he understands the fundamentals from textbooks and experience of cutting people open. He is nothing like her when it comes to weaving great tales that could be real.
Wanda doesn't get up from where she sits, not wishing to spook him.
She doesn't know why she does it. Lifting her hand, she curls her fingers into her palm but her index and middle, and presses those two against her temple as she looks at him. Her eyes don't glow red; she isn't interested in puppeteering him. It's meant to be akin to skating along the surface of a thick layer of ice.
She's too nervous. She doesn't approach it with the ease she's used to. But there's resistance that isn't in the form of any mental barrier he's erected. What was once a seamless slither feels like trudging through a thick bog. But Wanda persists.
He's afraid. Wanda doesn't need telepathy to know that.
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And he’s still fearful and guarded, which makes it a little more difficult. The shape of Thedas itself rebels against this, making all magic harder, more purposeful: you have to fight for it. Press harder. Her weight leaning on the ice, which creaks underfoot,
and Stephen exhales a shaky breath, noticing that he’s started clenching his jaw, and has to remind himself to relax again. The door opens a little wider, and he lets her in.
It’s still surface-level, but Wanda catches those glimpses of Stephen’s rapid-fire thoughts as they skim past her:
They’re in the library, home to Mobius and his filing system, which reminds him— Stephen has a book on Orlesian botany that he probably needs to return soon,
There’s that stack of forms on the table beside him, the medical questionnaire she still needs to fill out,
(wary relief at a familiar face, at her death not being on his conscience after all)
Wonder which division she’ll pick —
And at least Provost Stark isn’t here anymore to complicate matters even further. Small favours.
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Who worries about returning a book? Wanda rolls her eyes and lets him guide her, although the process is much more difficult than she remembers. It's like walking through skating without blades on her shoes. She isn't quite certain if she's moving at all. Is he even reaching for her? Is she even slipping beyond the surface?
The cracks are thick enough to slide through. The ice beneath her feet falls. But the water around her is far too icy. This used to be seamless; it used to feel like flying. His mind should feel like a blank piece of paper for her to scribble upon.
Her right temple thumps. Wanda ignores it. Hadn't she done that before, a long time ago? Instead of a dimly lit and well-stocked library, it had been the dull, grey prison of HYDRA.
She disallows its entrance and focuses on Stephen. She lets his thoughts roll over her, but they feel sharp. All her efforts push back on her mind wishing to take over, to find something normal, to ensure that this isn't a trick by Strange—
She slams the door on Stark. Sharp throbbing pounds behind her eye. Wanda glares at him, feeling…
"No," she snaps. "Not him."
Attending his funeral hadn't been her choice, nor did it bring her closure. She doesn't wish for him to haunt her here, either. Not now. Not when Stephen Strange is trying to trust her, and she him.
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“Sorry,” he says, apologetic in a way he isn’t often with people; it was the exact thing he hadn’t wanted to dredge up out of his subconscious around her, but that’s the whole trouble, isn’t it? Don’t think of pink elephants.
“You’ll probably— you’ll see his name all over the various Riftwatch paperwork and reports. He used to be here, too. He’s gone now.”
He keeps his voice as steady as he can, stripped of emotion and whatever hard-to-pin feeling he might have about that himself. Information. This is simply passing on relevant information.
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Perhaps.
She inhales deeply through her nose, still frowning. Her anger burns; the fear and uncertainty she has buried down since arriving in Thedas threatens to rise to the surface. Wanda wishes to lash out.
She takes a moment. One. Two. Three. Doesn't quite calm, but it's a good enough effort.
"Are you sad about that?" It's a snap, even though she doesn't intend it to be. Does Strange feel sad at the loss of Stark? (Would he feel saddened by the loss of her if she were to disappear from this place? Such a ridiculous thought. He should be relieved, just as she is she won't stumble into Stark's ghost.)
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It’s too big a can of worms to open when she’s a walking talking can of worms herself. Tony had been a strained colleague, eventually maybe a friend after a year in Thedas. Someone he’d once led to their death. He thought he’d done the same with her. He can’t get into it. So—
“I don’t know that it matters,” Stephen says instead, his voice mild, her snap ricocheting off that carefully-honed neutrality. It’s not the place or time to discuss his feelings with Wanda Maximoff, when he abhors having them at all, and would prefer to neatly sidestep them. “But I’m here. You’re here. That’s what we’re working with. Which reminds me—”
And then, perhaps it’s a distraction and another deflection from the wounds between them, or maybe he just remembered what he was supposed to be doing, but he picks up the piece of paper he brought with him and frisbees it in Wanda’s direction with the flick of a wrist. It drifts over, to be snatched up at ease: a blank questionnaire.
no subject
Gently taking the paper from the air, Wanda holds it with both hands and frowns at it. A… questionnaire.
A questionnaire.
The last time she filled one of these out— Is almost every little thing between them going to throw her back into the past? She doesn't wish to think of HYDRA. She doesn't want to remember how she had been poked and prodded on the Raft.
She exhales softly to release the tension building within her. Wanda doesn't lift her gaze. "What will you do with this information?" There's no bite to her soft bark. Her uncertainty is warranted; she doesn't wish to be seen as another experiment.
no subject
“The records were a bit of a shambles when I first took over. Mostly it’s to avoid any truly stupid accidents: what if the Gallows kitchens prepared a dinner with nuts, and one of our number died to an allergy? They don’t have EpiPens here. If someone has chronic migraines that they might need regular painkillers for, that’s good to know for keeping track of stockpiling and inventory. And so on, and so on. Everyday purposes.”
It’s boring and banal and not nefarious, in short.
“It’s useful to simply have it for reference. So, case in point: are you allergic to tree nuts, Wanda Maximoff?”
crystal, fourth
Hey. You the new rifter? [ The voice is young, but gruff. Could just be someone who doesn't like mornings! (It's not, though, she loves mornings and she sounds like this all the time.) ]
no subject
[ Ooh, this voice sounds very anti-mornings! Wanda's voice is cheery. She loves mornings. ]
Do you know what makes a new rifter? Is it red hair? A dazzling smile?
[ She is so annoying at this hour (as she is every hour, according to Pietro). ]
no subject
Try "falling through a hole in the sky."
action, fifth
Pardon me-- you must be Wanda Maximoff?
[He extends a delicate hand,]
Benedict Artemaeus, personnel officer.
no subject
This was a chance to do that, the whole blending in thing.
Glancing at his hand, she smiles and places hers in it. Leaning forward, her smile turns teasing - ]
Am I in trouble?
[ This is how one breaks the ice. ]
no subject
--no, [he says quietly, a bit uneasily] I wanted to know how you're settling in.