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The tea was cold. Wanda frowned down at it, pulling at the stray locks of hair out of her braid.
“You must be wondering why I brought you here,” she said, watching the brown liquid slosh over the floral design on the porcelain. “It’s been a while, and I thought you might like a change of view. I know you can hear and understand me very well. I’m not that ignorant about my magic than you think.”
Agatha sat with her legs crossed elegantly, manicured hands splayed on her skirt. Her hair was puffed at the bottom in an elaborate retro style. She blinked at Wanda blankly, face impassive. It was beautiful, the lack of hiccups the smoothness in her creation. Wanda rotated the teacup slowly, watching her.
“This is better though, isn’t it?” Wanda glanced outside the window and at the distant snow-capped mountains. A tiny bird was perched at the windowsill, pecking at the seeds she had laid out earlier. “Away from the…. from all those fake memories. Just keeping it all behind me and starting fresh. This is one of the places Vis and I had promised to visit together after the war. It is as far away as it could be, where no one can find us. Not until I want them to.”
Agatha didn’t bat an eye. To anyone, they looked like old friends catching up on gossip in a cozy little cottage. Light spilled from the open door forming a pretty pattern on the carpet, cool breeze wafting in and tickling her skin. Wanda stretched lightly, breathing in the aroma of freshly baked bread and jasmine flowers.
“Mmm. Smells like home too. Quiet and calm…. I didn’t speak a lot as a kid, not until it was quiet like this. This was when I loved home best, just shhhh…. silence. But Pietro,” Wanda shook her head, smiling wide. “He was so loud. It was always him running his mouth in English to show off and teasing me about it. Only when he’d go out to play with his friends, I’d practice in front of the mirror.”
A mirror shone in the corner and Wanda turned to look at it. It was like she was six again, donning a pigtail and talking to her reflection. She could almost see it, a small girl right there, in a pink frock. Rocking back and forth on her heels and feeling out the foreign syllables on her tongue.
“I’m so lonely,” Wanda said after a while, but there was nothing teary in her voice like it usually was. It was something else, so subtle only when you squint could you see it. Bitterness. “It’s been two months staying here among…. Birds and trees. Here I am talking to you just so I don’t go mad by myself. No one wants to be near me, you know that?” Humourless laughter bubbled out of her. “I tried. They’re terrified. But then again, that’s what I do isn’t it? I can control everything, but their fear.”
Wanda turned her gaze back at Agatha, sneering lightly. She raised a finger lazily, red wisps of smoke curling around it almost immediately as if reading her mind. With every flick, Agatha’s clothes changed their era. Frill frock to a jogger’s suit to a bodycon dress and back to the 50’s good old blouse and skirt.
“Sometimes I wonder if you were right,” Wanda twirled her finger in circles, watching objects around her glitch. “Or Vis, or Stark or any of the hundred other people who always said the exact same thing to me all these years. Maybe I really don’t know what I’m capable of.”
It shouldn’t be this effortless. Wanda stared at the table lamp that had turned into a large rose bush. A live, breathing beautiful rose bush. It didn’t even take an ounce of energy or focus, fuck, she might as well conjure a wild lion to serve her with just a single thought without even twitching a muscle. She didn’t understand how or why.
“I tried to keep the magic behind me. This…this power, it hurts people no matter what I do. But every time I reject it – you see that, you see that burnt hole through that wall? That chunk missing in the fireplace? – that’s what happens. I lose control.”
Agatha’s gaze bore into her, burning and intense. Wanda met her eyes, cocking her head. She was listening, Wanda knew it, she was listening every single word. A small part of her was screaming at her for acting so vulnerable in front of a witch that tried to kill her, but it felt good to have someone who listened to her. Someone who didn’t back away with fear, even if it was an enemy. Even if Wanda forced her to with magic.
Wanda rose to her feet, stalking towards Agatha.
“WestView will never happen again,” She said, raising her palm in front of Agatha’s face. Her hand didn’t glow, Wanda willed it not to. She was getting it, what she wanted all long. Control. “It’s already working. Look. It’s so easy now. This is a part of me, and I will control it, and people will accept me again as a hero. People will look up to me, I’m going to make that happen. And you are going to watch me prove you wrong.”
Wanda could feel the air pulse from the room behind her. It was pitch black, but Agatha’s eyes reflected red. Red in her irises swirling like paint, before sharpening into a face. Wanda’s face. Hair swaying like tentacles, eyes glowing brighter as the Darkhold’s pages turned.
Wanda turned around slowly, her astral form burning like fire within the dark room not so far from her. “It’s already working.”
There wasn’t a single moment where Wanda didn’t think about Billy and Tommy. About Vision. She was just fooling herself, thinking that running away to some isolated place would make her forget. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d feel Vision’s cool hand on her cheek. Every time she’d hear a branch crunch outside, she’d think Billy and Tommy had come back after playing.
Wanda would lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling without a wink of sleep. She couldn’t, not when even in her dreams she’d see herself with her family laughing on the couch together watching TV. The same dream every night.
Sometimes Wanda cooking in the kitchen, and Billy popping out of nowhere scaring her. Sometimes it would be Vision with his blonde hair and glasses, holding her waist pressing a sweet kiss on her lips.
Wanda would look so happy in every one of them. Her hair the old brown, not an inkling of red in her eyes, or even a tiny spark down her fingertips even when Billy or Tommy would be naughty. Normal. A normal woman with her family.
There would be nothing to do. Just vast stretch of land before her, birds chirping and leaves rustling. The emptiness made it worse. She’d see Vision on the ground disintegrating, hand stretched out to her calling her name. She’d see the people around her on their knees, scratching at their throats and screaming. It was all too much.
So, she’d enter the astral dimension. She would read the Darkhold. Time went by quickly, those intrusive thoughts that would tighten her chest evaporating the moment she would touch it. It sent a wave of calm over her, grounding her to the reality of things. It was like a long-lost possession, as if it was made for her as if it was carved just to be in her hands. Sometimes, she’d hear a small voice call out to her. Like an old friend. Like family.
Wanda, a voice whispered. Was it Vis?
Every day, Wanda would feel less crippled by self-pity. The air would feel rawer against her skin, more…. Real. It was something new, pulsating against her very core. Everyday, she learnt more about her real destiny. What she was meant to be. The very essence of the book seeping into her and giving her what she needed.
Everyday Wanda grew in power.
“You know Agnes,” Wanda said one day, kneeling in grass and cutting the overgrown bushes. “After Vis, Nat was the only one who wasn’t scared of who I was. She was fascinated. All my life, I saw terror in the eyes of anyone who saw me. HYDRA doctors, Stark, the very people I helped save.”
Agatha stood at the edge of the cliff, the wind billowing around her skirt. Her expression changed constantly between a glare and a pleasant twinkle of friendliness in her eye. Wanda smiled at the feet frozen just at the tip of where the land ended, below which ran a deep river.
“She said what I could do was ‘pretty cool’,” Wanda laughed, tossing the branch into pile. “Exactly her words. Said that even the littlest of training could me more lethal than anyone. It was just… moving and lifting objects back then. Sometimes I wonder what she’d say when she saw me now.”
Wanda sighed loudly, the constant nudging against her mind starting to get annoying. She peeled off her garden gloves and pushed Agatha back a few steps with a lazy twirl of her fingers. Agatha gained her footing like a gracious lady, and grinned charmingly at Wanda, all signs of resistance smoothening out instantly. Wanda sat back, tilting her head at her unfazed.
“I never told you about Nat, did I?” Wanda thought for a while. “Hmm. You’d hate her.”
Change realities, it said, spontaneous creation. Wanda was never religious, but these were the sort of things her mama said God did. There were spells for things she previously thought was just myths: necromancy, mind control, possession…. Everything that once mastered could place the world in her palm. It was intimidating at the most, overwhelming even.
With every page, Wanda felt her chest tighten with awe and maybe a little bit of….. fear.
The Darkhold commanded a strong sense of willpower, experience, durability and ability to pronounce the incantations. Only the ones who could withstand the strength the spells demanded, could perform even one such magic, or have their souls rip to shreds.
But Wanda. That chapter devoted to her was like a creature of fantasy, something any other reader would either be in horror of or set out to be one. She didn’t require to perform any of the intricate hand movements, or long incantations to do any of the magic taught by the book. Wanda could simply just desire it, and she had it.
It was like a dream. From a girl that barely talked, pushed around and bullied in class, the girl who silently stood in the corner while Pietro fought with a guy twice his size just because he looked at Wanda wrong to…..this. It gave her a sense of power and control over something she had craved for so long. To be someone who could save the world. To be the real hero.
Wanda, a voice whispered.
Wanda stood outside alone, barefoot. She breathed in the smell of apples and pine, watching the beautiful hue of colours in the sky while the sun set. It almost reminded her of the home she had created, when she’d sit with her boys outside and watch the sunset. It still sent a dull ache through her. She still missed the bickering of the two, Vision’s arms encircling her waist and pressing butterfly kisses on her neck.
All the preaching about being most powerful magic wielder in the universe, or whatever pedestal the Darkhold seemed to put her on, it felt far etched times. Deep down she still felt like a normal woman at home, preparing for another delicious dinner for her family. To take care of her husband and kids. To be like her mama.
“Don’t you have family, dear?” Agatha piped up besides her, gazing at the horizon with her. Wanda glanced at her.
Spontaneous creation. Wanda could do it now. She could have what she had back in WestView, except now no one got hurt anymore. She did try it again, of course she did. She remembered raising her hand, curling her fingers and feeling the familiar red wisps entangle withing them and shoot outwards
It was easier than before. She didn’t break a single sweat, and it was, a pair of feet forming in golden mist slowly building up into a torso. Before she knew it, there they were. Her beautiful boys.
Except they looked so wrong, despite looking just so alive and breathing and right in front of her. Wanda felt something cold settle in the pit of her stomach. It was different this time. She created them on purpose, and that itself seemed so unnatural, it left an awful taste in her mouth.
Billy and Tommy had stared up at Wanda with empty, stony eyes. Wanda recoiled slightly, flicking her hand almost on reflex, breathing harshly. They crumbed to ash.
She had created them using magic.
They weren’t real. They never were.
“Family?” Wanda said. “Oh, no. They’re dead.”
Power. The world in your palm. The Scarlet Witch is capable of anything.
The Scarlet Witch is the true embodiment of pure chaos magic.
Fear The Scarlet Witch.
Wanda eyes glowed. The tips of her fingers were beginning to blacken. Agatha was cooking happily in the kitchen, yammering about the perfect soup.
“You really wanted to be the Scarlet Witch didn’t you?” Wanda tilted her head at Agatha. She stared at the red mist dancing at the tip of her charred fingers and smiled. “I don’t blame you.”
Somewhere far away, Stephen Strange and Wong stood huddled in the library.
“Elder God Chthon,” Stephen read. “The first master of black magic.”
“Chthon marked Wanda at birth in every universe,” Wong said. “Chaos magic cannot infest itself into an infant – it’s too powerful – so it was latent within her for a long time. Only Chthon himself or a powerful cosmic entity could activate it back again.”
Stephen’s fingers brushed over the picture of Chthon. “The mind stone.”
“Wanda was never supposed to come in contact with the mind stone, Stephen. Look into the multiverse. None of her variants can tap into chaos magic, because it died long ago.”
“Her variants have children,” Stephen said. “Billy and Tommy, with the same names and same faces.”
Wong’s face was lined with a deep scowl, eyes boring into Stephen’s. “A mythical being with immense power, who can write reality as she wishes, capable of spontaneous creation. The moment she touched the mind stone, the prophecy was fulfilled,” Shadows came over Wong. “It isn’t just telekinesis and mind control. Wanda is the Scarlet Witch.”
Stephen heard of WestView and the Hex. He knew her mental health was fragile and impressionable. The Scarlet Witch meant doom, it meant the resurrection of Chthon.
“I need to see Wanda.”
Wanda.
Wanda gasped, her eyes flying open. The Darkhold’s pages flew. Chthon’s voice was in her head, whispering to her. Had he been trying to reach her this whole time?
Oh, I was watching you in every universe. Waiting. Somewhere, my prophecy would be fulfilled.
Power. The master of all magic, the most superior magic being to exist.
The DarkHold felt like home, it showed her dreams, hopes and her true self. Wanda found a purpose in life. She was scared of what people thought of her, that she was a monster but they are the ones to fear her. They should fear her.
Wanda laughed, as her astral self ascended. She looked like a goddess, enveloped in crimson red mist and energy, her crown and eyes glowing. In one hand she held the Darkhold and in another hand her fingers danced in intricate patterns as she held the fate of the world in her hands.
Say it.
Tell me who you are.