Woven in Scarlet
Chapter 6: What the Book Remembers
Previous Chapters
Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Fem!Spider!Reader
Summary:
A presence she canât name follows Wanda long before she ever understands why.
When the pull finally leads her out of the city, it takes her somewhere quiet, hidden, almost waiting.
_________
Wanda stopped sleeping.
At first it was unintentional.
She would lie down, close her eyes, and wait for exhaustion to pull her under. Minutes would pass. Then hours. Her body remained wired, restless, like something inside her refused to power down.
Every time she began to drift, a jolt of panic snapped her awake.
Not fear of danger.
Fear of forgetting something important.
Though she did not know what.
By the third night, she stopped trying.
Wanda sat at the table, surrounded by open books she was not reading.
Her eyes kept drifting to the empty chair across from her.
It had not been placed there for anyone. She knew that. She lived alone.
Still, she had moved it closer.
Without remembering doing so.
Her fingers tapped against the wood. Slow. Irregular. A rhythm that did not belong to any conscious thought.
Waiting.
For what, she could not say.
âThis is ridiculous,â she muttered, voice hoarse from disuse.
The sound startled her. It felt intrusive, like speaking in a room where someone else was trying to listen.
She glanced toward the doorway.
Half expectingâŠNothing.
Of course nothing.
Her chest tightened anyway.
Wanda stood abruptly, chair scraping harshly against the floor. The noise echoed too loudly, bouncing off the walls like the room was hollow.
âEnough,â she said, more sharply now. âI am not-â
She stopped.
Her gaze had snagged on something.
A mug sat on the counter.
Two mugs, actually.
One she recognized, dark ceramic, chipped at the rim. Hers.
The other was smaller. White. Plain. Clean.
Unused.
Her stomach dropped.
She walked toward it slowly, like approaching a wild animal.
âI didnâtâŠâ Her hand hovered over it without touching.Â
But it was there.
Not dusty. Not forgotten. Recently washed.
Placed beside hers, not stacked with the others.
Her throat tightened painfully.
A flicker of something passed through her mind, not a memory, more like the outline of one. The sense of standing in this exact spot while someone else leaned against the counter behind her. Not speaking. Just present.
Warm.
Gone before she could turn toward it.
Wanda gripped the edge of the counter hard enough that the wood creaked.
âStop,â she whispered. âStop doing this.â
Her magic pulsed weakly, reacting to distress rather than command.
The overhead light flickered.
For one disorienting instant, she smelled something sweet. Citrus. Sugar. Familiar in a way that made her chest ache.
Then it vanished.
She spun around.
No one.
Nothing.
The apartment felt wrong again, not empty, but recently emptied. Like the echo of footsteps had faded seconds too late.
Her breathing turned shallow.
Wanda pressed a hand to her temple, squeezing her eyes shut.
Frustration surged first, hot and sharp, burning through the helplessness.
She swept her arm across the counter.
The extra mug shattered against the wall, ceramic exploding into white fragments that scattered across the floor.
Wanda froze.
Her breath caught.
Instant regret flooded her, sudden and overwhelming, so intense it bordered on nausea.
âNo,â she whispered, stumbling forward. âNo, no-â
She dropped to her knees, hands shaking as she gathered the broken pieces. Some were small enough to cut. She did not seem to notice when a shard sliced her palm open.
Blood welled bright against pale skin.
Her hands stopped moving.
For a moment she only stared at the red pooling in her palm, expression gone strangely blank.
Then something inside her twisted.
Tears spilled over without warning, falling onto the ceramic fragments in uneven drops.
âIâm sorry,â she choked, voice breaking apart. âI didnât mean to⊠I didnât mean to break it.â
She did not know who she was apologizing to.
That made it worse.
Her shoulders began to shake, quiet at first, then harder, until the sobs tore out of her chest uncontrolled and raw.
The air around her pulsed with unstable magic, lights flickering wildly, the walls groaning softly as if pressure were building inside them.
Wanda curled forward, clutching the broken pieces to her chest like they were something precious instead of trash.
Blood smeared across the white ceramic, across her clothes, across the floor.
She did not wipe it away.
Did not heal it.
The pain felt grounding. Proof that something real still existed.
Eventually the sobs quieted, leaving her hollow and trembling.
She sat there on the floor for a long time, breathing unevenly, surrounded by shards and candlelight.
Her gaze drifted toward the empty chair at the table again.
Still there.
Still waiting.
The candles flickered as if stirred by breath.
Wanda lifted her head slowly.
For one impossible second, she thought she felt fingers brush her hair back from her face.
Gentle.
Familiar.
Gone immediately, leaving only cold air in its wake.
Her eyes widened.
She did not turn around.
She was suddenly terrified that if she looked, nothing would be there.
And she was not sure she could survive that confirmation.
So she stayed very still, staring straight ahead, tears silently tracking down her cheeks.
______________________
The feeling didnât leave her.
It settled somewhere low in her chest and stayed there, quiet but persistent, never strong enough to demand her attention outright, but never faint enough to disappear.Â
At first, Wanda tried to ignore it. That wasnât difficult. She had learned how to live around discomfort, how to let certain things exist without giving them space to grow.
For a while, that worked.
Long enough that she could move through the city without thinking about it.Â
Long enough that she could convince herself it was nothing more than restlessness, something leftover from everything she had already lost.
But it didnât fade.
Instead, it began to surface in smaller, harder-to-define ways.
 A thought that ended too soon.
 A moment of hesitation in the middle of something routine.Â
The quiet, unsettling sense that she had forgotten something important, followed immediately by the certainty that there was nothing there to remember.
Wanda stopped trying to explain it.
The city didnât help.
 It felt louder than usual, more crowded, like everything around her demanded attention she didnât want to give.Â
Conversations passed without settling.Â
Faces blurred together before they could mean anything.Â
Even the tower, once something solid and familiar, felt distant in a way she couldnât fully articulate. It wasnât that she didnât belong there anymore. It was that nothing seemed to hold her in place.
The team had basically fallen apart anyways after the loss they endured.Â
That should have made leaving easier.
It didnât.
The feeling in her chest sharpened whenever she tried to ignore it, subtle but insistent, as if it was waiting for her to notice the direction it was pulling her in.
And eventually, she did.
It wasnât a voice, or even a clear thought.Â
Just a sense of movement that felt more certain than anything else she had tried to hold onto.Â
She began to follow it without fully deciding to, letting it guide her in small ways at first.
 A different street.Â
A turn she wouldnât normally take.Â
Movement without a destination, but not without intention.
The further she went, the clearer it became.
Not stronger, exactly. More defined.
Like something ahead of her was coming into focus.
The apartment felt wrong. Too empty. Too many things that felt out of place. Missing.Â
She packed a bag and didnât spare another glance when she locked the door behind her.
Wanda stepped onto the busy sidewalk and let her feet lead her towards the train station.Â
She stepped onto the platform and boarded a train without caring about the destination.Â
The city thinned gradually, buildings giving way to open space until the noise fell behind her entirely.
 Wanda didnât stop to consider how far she had come or why she hadnât turned back.Â
The absence of doubt felt almost as unnatural as the pull itself, but she didnât question that either.
She got off on the 5th stop, feet carrying her away from the station and down the road.Â
Hours passed.
By the time the road disappeared beneath her feet and turned to dirt, she already knew she wasnât going to stop.
The trees closed in slowly, their height and density swallowing the light in uneven patches that shifted as she moved forward. The air felt colder here, quieter in a way that made every step more noticeable.
 Wanda slowed slightly, not out of caution, but because something in her chest had tightened in recognition.
She was close.
The certainty settled without resistance.
The cabin didnât reveal itself immediately.Â
It appeared in fragments, a sharp edge of wood cutting through the natural lines of the forest, then more of it taking shape as she moved forward.Â
It looked out of place, but not abandoned.Â
There were no signs of recent use, no path worn into the ground leading up to it, and yet something about it felt occupied in a way she couldnât explain.
Wanda stopped just short of the door, her gaze steady as she took in the details without fully processing them. Nothing about it should have drawn her in.
And still, she stepped forward.
The wood beneath her hand was colder than expected, solid in a way that grounded her for half a second before the feeling in her chest pulled tighter. She didnât hesitate when she pushed the door open.
The air inside felt heavier, not stale, but unmoving, like the space had been closed off from everything outside it. The room itself was simple. A table, a chair, a window that let in just enough light to outline the shape of things without fully illuminating them.
For a moment, nothing stood out.
Then her gaze landed on the center of the table, and everything else fell away.
A book rested there, closed and still, its presence subtle enough that it might have been overlooked if she hadnât been drawn directly to it.Â
There was nothing outwardly remarkable about it, nothing that should have demanded her attention.
But the feeling in her chest shifted the second she saw it, tightening into something sharper, more focused.
Recognition.
Not of what it was, but of what it meant.
Wanda moved closer without thinking, the distance between her and the table disappearing almost too quickly to register. Her hand lifted, hovering just above the surface of the cover as a flicker of hesitation passed through her.
Not fear.
Awareness.
Whatever this was, it wasnât neutral.
She could feel that much clearly.
The power beneath it wasnât chaotic or uncontrolled. It was contained, deliberate, layered with something older and heavier than anything she had touched before.
It didnât push her away.
It didnât need to.
It simply waited.
Wanda exhaled slowly, steadying herself as her fingers lowered the final inch.
The moment her skin made contact, the feeling in her chest shifted again, not disappearing, but aligning into something that felt almost like direction.
Her breath caught slightly before evening out.
The book opened on its own.
Not abruptly, not violently, but with a measured, deliberate movement that felt less like a reaction and more like an invitation.
Wanda didnât pull back.
Whatever had brought her here, whatever had been pulling at her since the feeling began, this was the closest she had come to understanding it.
And for the first time, it didnât feel out of reach.
Her gaze lowered to the pages as the ink began to move beneath her focus, shifting into something not yet fully formed.
Not clear.
Not complete.
But trying.
And that was enough to make her lean closer.
___________________
The cabin did not sleep.
Dust coated everything in a thin gray film that dulled color and softened edges, turning the world into something half-remembered.
Wanda preferred it that way.
Nothing here asked anything of her. Nothing expected her to be gentle, or kind, or human.
She didnât know how long she had been here.Â
Weeks? Months?Â
She sat cross-legged on the cracked floor, spine straight despite the exhaustion pulling at her bones. A faint ring of red light pulsed beneath her, at the center of the circle rested the book.
The Darkhold did not look ancient.
It looked patient.
Black cover. No ornamentation. No warning. Just weight. Just wrongness. The longer she stared at it, the more it felt like staring into a deep body of water, something that might ripple back if she leaned too close.
She had not slept in three days.
Sleep meant dreams. Dreams meant fragments. And fragments meant waking up with her chest aching like something had been torn out of it while she wasnât looking.
Her fingers hovered over the cover.
âShow me,â she said quietly.
The book opened on its own.
Pages flipped, slow at first, then faster, until the motion blurred into a whispering hiss. Ink crawled across parchment like living veins, rearranging itself into symbols she had never learned but somehow understood.
This wasnât the first time Wanda had requested the book show her these images.Â
Magic did not need translation. Only a price.
Crimson light bled from her hands, feeding the circle beneath her. The air thickened, pressure building like a storm about to break.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the images began.
Not visions exactly. More like impressions forced directly into her mind.
A couch. Indented on one side.
An empty mug on a table. Lipgloss on the rim, not hers.
Laughter, bright and close, gone before she could turn toward it.
Wandaâs brow furrowed. âWhat is this?â
The book did not answer. It only turned to another page.
A hand in hers. Smaller. Warm.
The sensation was so vivid she almost closed her fingers around empty air.
Her breath caught. Something sharp twisted behind her ribs, sudden and disorienting, like grief without a memory attached to it.
âWho?â she demanded, voice harder now. âWho is this?â
Ink bled across the page, pooling, reshaping.
The hand dissolved.
In its place came absence.
Not darkness. Not blankness.
Something worse.
A space where something should have been, outlined only by the way the rest of the world bent around it. Like seeing the shape of a body in falling snow after it has already been removed.
Wandaâs magic flickered violently.
âThat means nothing,â she said, though the words sounded thin even to her own ears.
The book did not stop.
More fragments.
A rooftop at sunset. Wind tugging at her hair. Someone standing too close behind her, presence warm at her back. Safe. Familiar.
She turned in the visionâŠand there was no one there.
The absence hit like a physical blow. Her stomach dropped, breath stuttering as a pulse of raw emotion slammed through her without context. Not fear. Not anger.
Loss.
Her hands clenched involuntarily. The red glow surged, cracking the stone beneath her boots.
âEnough.â
The pages kept turning.
A whisper, not a voice, not exactly, but a pressure against her thoughts:
You are incomplete.
Wandaâs head snapped up, eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. âStop.â
Something was taken.
Her pulse thundered in her ears.
âNo.â
Find her.
The circle flared brighter, heat rippling through the air. Dust lifted from the floor, spiraling upward in a slow, unnatural current.
âThere is nothing missing,â she said, each word clipped, precise. âIf there were, I would remember.â
The book stilled.
For a heartbeat, the sanctuary fell completely silent.
Then the next image came without warning.
Blood on her hands.
Not battle. Not enemies.
Just blood. Fresh. Bright. Wrong.
Her breath hitched. She knew that sight. She had seen it too many times to mistake it.
But this felt different.
Her hands in the vision were shaking.
Someone was speaking to her, voice urgent, gentle, right in front of her, and again there was nothing there.
The words were gone. The speaker erased. Only the shape of sound remained, like hearing a conversation through water.
Pain lanced through her skull so sharply she doubled forward with a gasp. Magic burst from her in a violent pulse, shattering what remained of a nearby table to dust.
âStop it!â she snapped, voice echoing through the ruins.
The book did not obey.
You let it be taken.
Her nails dug into her palms. âI have lost many things. You will have to be more specific.â
This one mattered.
Something inside her chest twisted hard enough to steal the air from her lungs.
Images flickered faster now.
A kitchen, lights low, the quiet intimacy of late night. A half-eaten pizza on the counter. Someone leaning against it, looking at her like she was the only thing in the room.
She tried to focus on the face.
The image burned away.
Not faded. Not blurred.
Erased.
Wanda sucked in a sharp breath, shoulders tightening. For the first time, anger threaded through her confusion.
âYou cannot show me a ghost and expect me to chase it,â she said coldly.
The pages trembled.
Ink gathered in the margins, pooling into shapes that almost formed letters before collapsing into black smears.
She chose this.
Her head jerked up. âChose what?â
No answer.
Just one last fragment, softer than the others.
Warmth pressed against her side. Fingers threading through hers under a table. A quiet promise spoken too low to hear.
For a split second, something dangerously close to peace flickered through her chest.
Then it vanished.
Not faded.
Cut out.
The backlash hit like a knife between her ribs. Wanda choked on the sudden emptiness, hand flying to her sternum as if she could physically hold herself together.
Her magic detonated outward in a shockwave of scarlet light. Windows that had survived years of decay finally exploded, glass raining across the floor in a glittering cascade.
Silence crashed down in its wake.
Wandaâs breathing sounded too loud in the hollow space. Too uneven. Too human.
Slowly, carefully, she closed the book.
For a long time, she didnât move.
Dust settled. The air cooled. The red glow beneath her faded to embers.
She told herself the tightness in her throat was irritation. Exhaustion. Residual magic.
Not grief.
Grief required something to grieve.
After several minutes, she became aware of something wet sliding down her cheek.
Her hand came up automatically.
Tears.
She stared at the moisture on her fingers like it belonged to someone else.
ââŠWhy?â she whispered, voice barely audible.
No memory surfaced. No image. No explanation.
Just the hollow ache, deep and persistent, like a bruise on the inside of her ribs.
Outside, thunder rolled across the sky, distant but growing.
The book shifted behind her.
A single page turned on its own.
Wanda did not look back.
She knew, with a certainty that made her stomach sink, that if she opened it again, it would keep digging. Keep pulling at that invisible wound until something broke loose.
Or until she did.
The wind howled through the shattered sanctuary, carrying dust and the faint smell of rain.
Behind her, ink slowly spread across the open page, forming a shape that almost resembled a name.
Almost.
Then it bled outward, drowning the letters before they could become legible.
Wanda pressed her palm flat against her chest, as if she could steady the uneven rhythm there, and closed her eyes.
For just a moment, she could have sworn she felt another heartbeat answering her own.
But when she focused, there was nothing.
Only silence.
And the unbearable sense that she had forgotten something she was never meant to lose.
____________
The first vision came without warning.
Wanda was not reading the Darkhold.
Not casting.
Not even thinking about it.
She was washing a glass at the sink when the world slipped sideways.
For a heartbeat, the cabin was replaced by a different kitchen, brighter, warmer, sunlight pouring through a window that did not exist in her home.Â
The counters were cluttered. Lived in. There were crumbs on the cutting board. A knife left carelessly beside a half-sliced orange.
And there was laughter.
Not loud. Not echoing. Close.
Behind her.
Wanda froze, water running over her hands.
She knew, with the kind of certainty that bypasses logic entirely, that if she turned around, someone would be there.
Someone familiar.
Someone important.
Her breath caught halfway in.
Slowly, carefully, she turned.
The space behind her was occupied.
A shape stood there, backlit by the sun. Human. Close enough that she could have reached out and touched them. Close enough that she should have been able to see their face.
But the details refused to resolve.
The figure blurred at the edges, like heat distortion over asphalt. The center of it⊠empty. Not invisible. Not shadowed.
Missing.
A hand lifted.
Her heart slammed painfully against her ribs.
It was reaching toward her face.
Tender.
Careful.
Like someone about to brush a strand of hair behind her ear.
Wanda leaned into it before she realized she was moving.
Her body knew the gesture even if her mind did not.
Fingers almost touched her cheek.
Pain exploded across the vision.
The figure tore apart like paper set on fire, disintegrating into ash that never hit the ground. The kitchen collapsed inward, light shattering into fragments that spun away into darkness.
Wanda gasped.
The cabin snapped back into place around her.
Cold. Dim. Silent.
The glass slipped from her hands and shattered in the sink.
She didnât react.
Her breathing had turned shallow, uneven, each inhale catching like her lungs had forgotten how to work.
ââŠNo,â she whispered, voice barely sound at all.
Her hand lifted slowly to her cheek.
Warm.
As if something had almost touched her.
Her knees buckled.
She caught herself against the counter, staring at nothing, mind racing uselessly.
It hadnât felt like a dream.
It hadnât felt like imagination.
It felt like a memory seen from the outside.
Wanda squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the image back into focus.
The kitchen.
The light.
The closeness.
The almost-touch.
Nothing came.
Only the echo of warmth and a hollow ache blooming beneath her ribs.
âWho are you?â she asked the empty room.
The silence that followed felt wrong.
Not absent.
Withholding.
____________
By nightfall, she had convinced herself she had imagined it.
Until the next vision came.
This one was quieter.
Darker.
A rooftop, seated on the edge, legs dangling over empty air. The city stretched below in a sea of lights.
Someone sat beside her.
Close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
Neither of them spoke.
They didnât need to.
The silence felt comfortable. Easy. Shared.
Wanda turned her head slowly.
The figure turned too.
For a single, fragile moment, she thought she would finally see-
Static ripped across the image.
The face dissolved into blank distortion.
Not shadow.
Not blur.
Erasure.
A sound tore out of her throat, something between a sob and a growl, as the vision collapsed.
She doubled over, clutching her head as pain lanced behind her eyes.
âSTOP TAKING THEM AWAY!â she shouted into the empty cabin.
Scarlet energy detonated outward, rattling the walls hard enough to knock books from shelves.
The Darkhold slid across the table on its own.
Opened.
Pages turning rapidly, stopping on an image that did not belong to any spell.
A tear in space.
On the other side, another world.
Wanda approached slowly, breath unsteady.
In the shifting surface of the page, she saw herself standing in a different room. Softer lighting. Softer expression. Not alone.
Someone stood just out of frame beside her.
A hand rested on Wandaâs shoulder.
Gentle.
Possessive in the quiet way of someone who knows theyâre welcome.
Wanda reached toward the page without thinking.
âWho is that?â she whispered.
The other Wanda turned slightly, as if reacting to a voice she could not hear.
She smiled.
Not the strained smile Wanda wore now.
A real one.
Warm. Unburdened.
Loved.
The unseen figure leaned closer.
Their head rested briefly against Wandaâs temple.
The page burned.
The second figure vanished completely, leaving only empty air beside the alternate Wanda.
The smile faltered.
Confusion flickered across her face.
Then the vision dissolved.
Wanda stared at the blank page, hands trembling.
Her chest ached so sharply she pressed her fist against it.
ââŠYou had someone,â she said hoarsely to the empty room. âI had someone.â
Not a question.
A realization.
Her eyes lifted slowly.
Scarlet light bled into them, thin and dangerous.
âWhere did you go?â
Wanda was no longer asking if the visions were real.
She was asking how far she would have to go to get them back.
âWhere are they?â
The question came out quieter than anything else she had said, but it carried more weight than all of it.
It lingered in the space between her and the page.
For a moment, nothing happened.
ThenâŠthe Darkhold answered.
The page beneath her hand moved.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Wanda stilled, her breath catching as her focus snapped back to the center of it.
The ink didnât rush into place.
It formed carefully, like it was being written in real time, each letter appearing with quiet precision.
Not an image.
Not a memory.
An answer.
Her eyes tracked the movement, unblinking.
A name.
America Chavez.
The letters settled into the page as if they had always belonged there.
Wanda didnât react immediately.
Her gaze remained fixed, something in her expression tightening as the meaning began to take shape.
Not confusion.
Not doubt.
Direction.
Her fingers loosened slightly against the book, but she didnât pull away.
Because thisâŠthis was the first clear thing it had given her.
And she wasnât going to let it disappear.
______________________________
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