Bury me standing

Maybe it was time for Wanda to just let herself be capable of somewhat caring for Magda as she did for Marya, if not loving her the way a daughter should. Of course Marya would always have a special place in Wanda’s heart, but maybe Magda deserved a fair chance to be able to win Wanda over.

Wanda looked up to Magda with a smirk. She wanted to laugh, but she honestly wished sometimes that Hank had given her some kind of remote. Things worked out for the best, she figured. Without control over him, they could live like a normal couple, and that was all she wanted. He has his free will, he could do as he pleases. And he chose to kick his wife out of their home.

“I wish I knew the answer to those questions, but I just… don’t know. I believe he can feel and love, but not in a conventional sense. I used to think he just loved me because I was the only woman that showed interest in him, do you think that could be evidence of some kind of feeling? Is attachment a healthy bond in a relationship?” She curled her body into a ball as she sat in her (surprisingly) comfortable chair, never taking her eyes off of her mother in the hopes of finding some kind of judgement or disgust, or just something she could fault her for.

“I think the fact you care enough to ask that question is the biggest sign that you should think this through a little more.” Her words are kind, although perhaps not the most helpful. She doesn’t know what to advise, and that’s the truth. She’s treating Vision just as she would any other of her daughter’s suitors, as a man more than a machine because in truth that’s what he is — but she’d be lying if she said she did have some reservations with how to approach mecha psychology. It wasn’t exactly the usual subject for discussion.

The moment he says it, he realizes with a sickening jolt that it isn’t true. Oh, not the parts about race and class - he doesn’t think he’s so shallow as that - but he has looked down on humans, has declared himself their superior.

And every time he did, he thought of her.

“Magda,” he says again, levelly this time. “You deserve better than me. You always have.”

She doesn’t know how to speak to him. Doesn’t know how to explain that there are days where she doesn’t want to wake up anymore, where she feels inadequate and surpassed by her children, where she feels like a deadweight tied around all their feet simply by existing. Humanity is her curse and it’s the one thing she’s longed for since the camps had stripped it from her. She wanted to be seen as human, to stop being treated as something beneath that, yet even now she’s still not good enough. She’s still not what Erik wants or what he needs.

“It is… comfort to think this way.” Wanda shrugs, crossing her arms and stealing another glance at Magda out of the corner of her eye. Wanda finds herself wishing so badly that she had a connection to this woman. That she had found some part of her family out there in the world. Even if it meant a few things in her life would be different. It would just mean that she wasn’t so alone in the world, as she’d said before. 

“But it might be for the better… And I always thought if I had family we would know each others faces.” Wanda turns to Magda again, gesturing with with her hands to her own face. She makes sweeping gestures, exaggerated movements down her cheeks. “That they would look at me and we would know. Just like that.”

It’s why she denies it. It’s why she claims no connection when she can feel it. It’s in her bones and aching in her chest, her stomach knotting as a sheer force of will serves to remind her that she can’t think this way. It wouldn’t be fair. Not after so long, to have wandered into someone’s life and expected it to be okay. Wanda acts as if she’d like to meet family, to find that she still has some after so much loss — but would the reality really be the same? Would she still be so tolerant if she knew half of what had transpired?

It was nice to relax some and sit down on the ground without having to worry about if the Germans were going to come over to their foxhole. He tilted his head as she spoke, furrowing his brow since he believed it showed he was listening to what she was saying and somewhat suggesting. “Shoot ‘em nicely? If that was a possible thing I don’t think that would work. They surrender if they want, we don’t shoot ‘em then usually. Some guys break and kill ‘em.” He shrugged at that, there was nothing they could do about it  and war was hell after all. “Well sometimes they get shot there and surrender too so we don’t kill ‘em when they’re surrenderin’ like I said before. But the majority? Nah, those Krauts are too proud to surrender.”

She never thought she’d see the day that she was willing to sit down with a soldier and talk to him. Then again, she supposes in this case, it’s not exactly someone she would actively consider to be one. Sure, he’s armed and dangerous and trained to kill - but he’s a friend, not the enemy and that tends to add a lot of conflict to how she views the world and the people in it. Maybe Magda isn’t trusting of the Americans, to her they all pose some degree of risk, but when they talk to her as if she’s an equal, as a person in her own right, it’s enough to endear her enough to keep wanting to know them.

❛ —I would almost pay to see that, actually.