scarlet_chaos | Elsewhere in the Preserve

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Elsewhere in the Preserve | Monday Evening

Wanda couldn't go back to her apartment after saying goodbye to her boys. She was too sad, too angry--she felt like she could explode and didn't want to risk hurting anyone in the building. She instead found herself deeper in the preserve, wandering aimlessly.

She had lost them. Again. And this time a goddamn island had taken them from her. How much more of this was she expected to take? A few poor tree branches lost their lives to Wanda's blasts, but the measured use of power was helping her calm down.

Eventually the anger dissipated to the point where Wanda could slow down, leaning against a tree and trying to come to terms with the heavy feeling in her chest. She knew by now she couldn't make it go away, not without another Westview happening. She'd just have to learn to live with it, like she had with everything else.

There'd just be some crying in the woods first. Then she'd learn to live with it.

[Sad post is sad. It's open if anyone spots the red in the trees, and she has her phone on her too]

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Wanda shook her head. "Feels like being alone is the problem."

"No one warned you about this weekend," Annie guessed, worrying her lower lip. "Your boys came?"

That seemed so wildly unfair, if they'd shown up. The island showing you kids you had had seemed so different from kids you might have. A concrete past rather than a possible future.

Wanda nodded again. "Yeah, they did. I thought--I thought maybe..."

She thought maybe she'd get something nice for once.

"It's not fair," Wanda croaked out before starting to cry again.

"Oh, no, it isn't," Annie agreed, rushing over to slip an arm around Wanda's shoulders, if she'd let her. "It isn't supposed to show you kids you've -- lost. I didn't think it did, anyway. I'm so sorry, Wanda."

Wanda was grateful for the contact, leaning into Annie's hold. "I just--I always thought there was a chance I could get them back. To get them back and have it not be real...I don't know if I can take this."

"They're supposed to be a possible future," Annie said softly, stubbornly optimistic. "Maybe that means you do get them back, somewhere."

Or that she'd never lost them in the first place, in some version of the universe. Maybe Vision was alive there, too.

"But not here," she said. "Letting them go was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. The island rubbing it in my face is just cruel."

Letting them go was new information, but Annie wasn't going to press it just now. "Maybe the island was trying to give you a gift," she tried, rubbing a soothing hand over Wanda's back. "More time with them."

Seventy-two hours wasn't a lot, but Annie could see it being precious in Wanda's position.

"Gifts shouldn't hurt this much," she said, wiping at her eyes again. "Once Steve told me they'd be leaving, it was all I could think about. If I had more time...I don't know, maybe I could have prepared or left the island or something."

"You would have rather not seen them at all?" Annie asked carefully, mostly just in an effort to try to help Wanda work through what she was feeling.

"Yes--maybe," she amended. "I'm so tired of having things ripped away from me. After awhile you become unable to enjoy anything and just wonder when it's going to leave."

That's called depression, Wanda.

"And you said it all happened in May," Annie ventured. "It's like, just enough time to maybe have made a little peace with it and then -- hey, just kidding, here's the kids for a weekend. You're right. Cruel is the word for it."

Wanda nodded again, pulling away slightly, trying to get herself together. "Did you have anyone come?"

"Diego's and my future kids. Maybe," Annie shared, nodding and smiling slightly. "They're a little different from the versions of themselves we met last year, but it was still really nice to get to see them. Autumn and Ben. Twins, too."

That was kind of the thing about this weekend. Annie tried not to read too much into it, because she would love to read too much into it, but it didn't seem like any of it necessarily meant anything. But thinking like that, she realized, was a luxury she had as a mother of entirely theoretical children.

"Nice names," Wanda said with a slight smile. "I'm sure it's not easy letting them go either."

"No," Annie said, choosing her words carefully, "but I try to just believe it's not forever, and I'll get to meet them for real someday. My two show up as teenagers, too, so I can tell we have some time. Were your little guys the way you -- were they the same age?"

Somehow that seemed a less painful thing to ask than if they were the way Wanda remembered them.

Wanda nodded. "Yeah, they looked the same. Which means they listened to me, because I had to convince them to stop aging themselves up after they did it twice before."

She knew that required an explanation. "The boys weren't created in the...conventional way."

Which was a big 'no shit' if you knew Wanda's husband had been an android.

"Well, yeah, I figured," Annie agreed, since she did indeed know that part, but she was giving Wanda a confused look all the same. She'd more been figuring, like, adoption, or some kind of fancy sciencey explanation. "What do you mean they were aging themselves up?"

That was more unexpected, and almost sounded like it had been more a magic thing than a science thing.

"You know how on TV shows they'd come back for a new season and the kids would be played by older actors?" Wanda explained. Tried to explain. "It was like that. They went from babies to five-year-olds to ten-year-olds in about the span of a half a day."

You know, just like on TV!

"I was only pregnant with them for a couple of hours too."

"The kids were part of the thing where you took over the town," Annie breathed in realization, her eyes going wide. "Weren't they?"

It all made sense, suddenly, but it also hurt to realize the implications of all of that. Letting them go made way more sense.

Wanda nodded. "I didn't really realize it when it was happening but...they were what I needed. Not conventional, like I said, but they were mine. I gave birth to them, raised them."

Well, as much as she could in the short time she had them.

"But they were a part of the illusion, along with Vision," she said. "So it came down to freeing the town or keeping my family. I did what I was supposed to."

The heroic thing, apparently. Even if it killed her just a little bit to do it.

"That must have been so hard," Annie said quietly, aware she was severely understating that. "And then to have to give them back again today --"

She got it. Or, well, she understood, and it made her heart hurt.

"I'm so sorry," she said again. "It's so unfair." In every sense of the word.

"It really, really is," Wanda said, wiping at her eyes again. "Thanks. For coming out here. Ever since Westview, I'm having trouble trusting myself when my emotions get out of hand. I'm afraid of what I could do. I'm grateful you weren't afraid."

She kind of understood where Bruce was coming from these days.

Annie reached to pull her into a hug, a little more sure of herself. "I could never be afraid of you, Wanda. It's okay. Any time."

Even as intimidating as Wanda could be when she was all red and misty, Annie's (misguided) wholehearted belief in her own ability to take a blast or two coupled with her (less misguided) wholehearted belief in Wanda would have kept her from ever being too scared to investigate mysterious red blasts after a weekend this emotional.

"Thank you," Wanda said, hugging Annie back. "I'm here too, if you ever need it."

And when she wasn't such a mess.

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Elsewhere in the Preserve | Monday Evening

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