Love is for souls

“You disappeared into thin air,” Clint said, raising an eyebrow at her. “I know you’re okay, and you know you’re okay, but Pietro sure as hell can’t say for sure.” 

Clint was never too sure about the extent of Wanda’s powers, so he just took her word for it. “How is the magic-y stuff working for you here anyways?” he asked. “Like, considering this place doesn’t have magic of it’s own.”

“Why are you guys so mean to me?” Clint asked with a pout, his eyes full of amusement. “And don’t pretend I’m the only one who enjoys blowing stuff up! Have you met Tony?”

“I’ve been here a week, maybe two,” he told her. “So yeah, I’ve seen him pretty recently.” Clint had been rather busy searching for Nat in the far corners of the world, but he had heard from Pietro. Technically, his assignment had just been to find Black Widow, but he had been keeping his eyes open for any sign of Wanda too. The twins were his friends, no matter what had happened in the past. 

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure Pietro is always some level of grumpy, especially when you’re in danger.”

Clint wasn’t sure what to say on the living situation. He was used to living alone, and so was Nat, leaving the only other options Wanda’s fellow mutants. Which he definitely couldn’t speak for. “Besides me and Nat, have you run into anyone else you know here?”

“Good to know any New York is a shit show,” he said dryly. 

“And why do you guys keep assuming I blow things up on purpose?” he asked with a pout.

In intelligence circles there had been word of odd disappearances, but it wasn’t a developed pattern, or something fully on her radar until she was gone herself. “They know you wouldn’t leave without notice, especially not to Pietro. They’ll know it was an extenuating circumstance, or not of your choice… Our friends are smart and paranoid enough to suspect something is off immediately, but the general populace…”

She paused, puzzlement and anger all held tenuously beneath the surface, then continued.

“By this point, based on the number of people here from our world, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t caught on that something has been happening, in a general sense.” More than just their friends, this had affected everyone. Nat looked over at her evenly, shaking her head. “Neither you nor I chose this, Wanda.”

“Paranoid enough is perhaps the key,” She smiles a little at the thought. It did hurt her to think that there was no line, absolutely none, to any of her friends, not to her sons, not to her brother. No one. It felt lonely, a deep sort of lonely. After a shrug and another sip of tea, Wanda turns her curious gaze to her friend. “That’s not what I asked, Natasha,” A little smile curved the corner of her mouth. “I know we did not but that doesn’t mean feelings like guilt and confusion don’t accompany what has happened, you know?” Natasha was never one to talk about her emotions. She knew that — Wanda, in an attempt to be better, in an attempt to be in more control of herself she had been practicing observing her emotions and attempting to let them pass.

“The Avengers,” Wally echoed dramatically, raising an impressed eyebrow. “Very cool. Very… vengeful. Think I know a guy who’d love it. Don’t steal him from us.”

He laughed easily, brightly as she winked. “See? You’re totally a good guy – girl. Woman,” he finished with a shrug.

He quickly ordered an iced mocha, adding a sheepish little dropped the other one when the girl behind the counter gave him a weird look. It’d probably only been about ten minutes or so since he was last in. He grinned again at being chided and didn’t dignify it with an actual response, just grinning his bright grin and giving her an easy wink. It just wasn’t in his nature not to try and help, these powers of him too… demanding. Every second was a lifetime, and he couldn’t just turn that off, he couldn’t just sit back and let people get hurt. He didn’t want to do that anymore. Not help people.

Iced mocha in front of him, he sits down next to Wanda, tilting his head against in implicit permission for her to continue her question. It was The Big One, of course, the expected one. The only one there was to ask right now, he figured. Other than so how do we get the fuck back?

“It’s not great, I guess. It’s not so much the world that’s weird to me, it’s the fact that so many of us are here. And you – You’re not from my Earth, are you? I’ve never heard of Avengers or a Scarlett Witch. So that’s three dimensions affected. Which is. Not ideal.” Worrying, even, one might say, but that one would not be Wally, because when Wally uttered words like worrying, he was worrying and once he started doing that, there was no calming down.

(Dick wasn’t here to keep him grounded, to make the buzzing of his heart, the rushing of blood in his veins stop. He couldn’t panic now. He couldn’t panic now.)

“As for the world? Eh. Honestly been worse places. I guess I can’t really blame these people for being suspicious of us, even though they’re only fucking themselves over by not letting us do our jobs. But sometimes people just gotta do that, you know? Fuck themselves over, I mean. They’ll learn. Hopefully fast.”

Before the whole universe destabilized itself and went kaboom pow bang.

He shrugged.

“What do you think?”

Wanda chuckles and holds her hand up in mock surrender. “Promise not to steal anyone. Anyway, only half my team is here right now, we are not in any position to be stealing anyone,” She teases then rolls her eyes a little. “Yes, a woman is the title you use for a grown female person. I am one of those.” “It doesn’t appear that I am from your earth, no. I think my brother would have known of another Speedster,” Wanda admits. It was curious to know that all these places existed in tandem — well, of course, she knew they did — but it was odd to be presented with the evidence so clearly. “No, I suppose it isn’t great.” But it Wanda it also didn’t seem incredibly… impossible. Wanda knew she could, if she could tap into it, probably merge and rip apart these dimensions and set everything right. It made it all the more frustrating to not know that but to lack the control it would take to do something like that.

“Even if it is fast, it’ll never be fast enough — not to your liking anyway,” Wanda says knowingly. She agreed. She had been in worse places. “When I was a teenager a group of people tried to burn me at the stake so — it could be worse,” She jokes. It wasn’t a joke, but it was said in the tone of one and she was smiling, so she hoped Wally would be too. “Me?” Wanda considered a moment, swirling her tea with a thoughtless red glow. “I think that reality is fragile and we have to be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of security,” Whatever that meant, even Wanda wasn’t entirely sure. “I think we have to be vigilant because we are not wanted here and the not-wanted always end up suffering. I worry about that. Not to be too dark or anything.” This man radiated a sort of internal sunshine, Wanda could almost see it physically glowing around it. She didn’t want to put a rain cloud over it.

A brief frown crossed his face as she brought up Pietro. The twins had always been overprotective of each other. If Clint had been upset when Natasha had disappeared, Pietro had been downright deranged at the disappearance of his sister. 

“He’s still kicking,” he assured her. “Him, and the rest of your family.”

“Yeah, I am,” he said. “I’m used to living in dumps.” Just having a roof over his head was enough for him. Anything else was a luxury. “What about you? What have you been up to?”

“Did you see him before —“ Wanda asks, suddenly animated. “How long have you been here? Was he upset?” That seemed a silly question — he would be upset wondering where she had gone. She wondered how long before he assumed something terrible had happened to her. Then, she wondered how much longer before he assumed she had just deserted him. “He’s always still kicking,” she agrees, deflating a little. “I am in the housing, yes. It has been — I am not used to living alone,” She decided to keep it simple. She had always been with Pietro, then with the Brotherhood, then with the Avengers. She wasn’t sure she particularly enjoyed being in the housing. There were people living on all sides of her but the tension was palpable — anyway none of those people were her people.

“Haven’t found a real job yet, have to say, being the Scarlet Witch hardly pays the bills,” she smirks. “But there is a lot of crime here. Unchecked crime. Better than sitting on my hands, blow anything up lately?” She teases.

“Oh, sorry,” he laughed, scratching the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Wally West.” He let his smile turn playful, charming. “And you can call me whatever you like as long as you call me.”

He tilited his head in interest as she told him about the team – he’d noticed the accent of course, but it seemed rude to comment on it. He was so used to being surrounded by a plethora of strange accents, it barely registered as something out of the ordinary anymore.

“A team, huh? I had one too! Other people with powers, like you and your brother? What’re they called? The one I work with now is called the Justice League.” He laughed a little, because for some reason saying that name out loud in a world like this seemed…. “Cheesy, but it works, I think. Gets our point across, anyway.”

He grinned at her, easily. “I dunno, most bad guys don’t apologize when they make me trip. They usually gloat, or laugh, or haul me to their super elaborate yet strangely inefficient death traps. So unless you’re planning to like, shove me down the coffee bean grinder, I think you’re cool.”

He gave her a playful mock salute at her gentle chiding. “Roger that.”

Wanda gave him a flat look, but she pursed her lips against a smirk. She was sure he thought he was charming. She was hard to convince on that front, but he was cute, in the adorable pinch-your-cheeks way.

“Justice League?” Wanda smirks a little bit. It was sort of cheesy but she wasn’t going to judge. “The Avengers,” She thought it definitely had an edgier sound to it, but what did it matter really? The name was ancillary, the job is what mattered. “We are the Avengers.” Wanda looked as if she was considering for a moment, stroking her chin thoughtfully before she flashed him a smile. “No, I don’t think I will try that. I could technically rearrange every one of your molecules if I wanted to, but I don’t,” She says casually and then winks. “That did not sound promising, young man,” She teases and pulls out her wallet. She orders a black tea and waits for him to order before moving to a table and sitting down. “So… if you don’t mind me asking? How do you find this new world? As someone with powers are you… concerned?”

“If they don’t realize you and I specifically are here, they may be. Tony or Pietro wouldn’t, no, but the rest? Bruce, Steve and most of all the others have the sense to keep their heads down… Not all gone to ground, necessarily, but staying quiet. Either way, I should still be able to find them.” Whatever their other skills, they couldn’t outmaneuver her. She’d been watching additions to the government housing, new credit card enrollments, rentals outside of the assigned housing… among a myriad of other avenues.

Natasha paused, inclined her head in acknowledgement. There had been longer periods of solitude for her, and she still did solo missions over the course of being on the Avengers, but she could say she’d become somewhat accustomed to the notion of a team over the years. The lack didn’t throw her off her game, but she could only imagine what Wanda felt. “It’s… strange. I didn’t realize how much I’d gotten used to all the chatter.” She smirked, but didn’t let that stop the genuine look in her eyes as she met Wanda’s.

At Wanda’s question, she thought for a long moment. She alone didn’t possess the skills to get them back, and while Wanda had deep reserves of power, that didn’t necessarily mean she could channel them in a way that could fix this. “There isn’t anything to point to the rate of people coming through slowing any. Eventually one of them will come through. They must be working on it from over there, as well.”

“Could you imagine how puzzling it must be for them? People disappearing. No note, no nothing. Imagine walking into my room and seeing everything just as it is but I am nowhere to be seen. I can only imagine the panic something like that might cause. Not just me, of course, but everyone who has come through,” Wanda sighs a little bit. If any group of people were in a position to work out what the hell was going on, it was the ones they had left behind.

She wondered if they even realized Natasha was missing yet. She often went off the grid and was expected to just pop up, she usually always did.  They would realize eventually.

A fond smile crossed his face as she pulled him up into a hug. She seemed to be just the same as when they had last seen each other, so he relaxed. He didn’t want to admit he had been slightly worried when she hadn’t returned within a few weeks. Wanda had always been one of his most powerful friends, so the idea that she had gotten stuck here as well had surprised him.

“Well, I knew you two were okay,” he said with a shrug.. “You and Nat are too stubborn to die.”

“Pietro isn’t…” She shrugs a little. It felt like all she could talk or think about. It oscillated between worry for Pietro and worry for Billy and Tommy. At least they had other people around them — they had each other. Without her Pietro was alone and that was almost never good. Anyway, Clint was his best friend, even though neither of them would admit it. “Too stubborn to die, that’s one way to put it. Though, you out stubborn us,” She smirks. “Are you living where they sequestered us?” She asks, taking a sip of her tea, almost defiantly, if one could sip tea defiantly.

“Quicksilver? That’s a badass name. And so is Scarlett Witch. Never ever heard of them before, though,” which was weird. Maybe multiple dimensions were affected by whatever was happening here? That opened up a different can of worms though which Wally… was not going to think about right now. He hesitated for a moment, but the woman had already disclosed her and her brother’s secret identity, and she obviously knew about his superspeed so, “They call me The Flash.”

He pointed her in the direction where he knew a coffee shop close by – he’d been here three weeks, long enough to know essentials like this, and nodded at her next assertion.

“Yeah, seems about right.”

He shrugged. “They’ll get used to us. We’re the good guys, and they’ll realize that. Hopefully soonish. People trying to shoot you does get old. At this point I just feel bad for all the ammo they’re wasting. Can’t be cheap.”

“Well perhaps you will meet and you can tell him so,” Though she did not imagine he would be impressed by how… easily impressed this kid was. Wanda found it charming. Every friendly face was a relief. Every powered person she ran into was a little bit of weight off of her shoulders. It meant that she wasn’t alone and that the people she loved were liked safe or going to come through and would be able to figure out what was going on with her.

She wasn’t sure which to hope for, that they were safe back where she was from or that they come through. Wishing they would come here felt selfish.

“It’s okay,” he said again, because he was pretty sure she was feeling worse about it than he was. He gave her a charming smile, like a private joke. “I heal pretty fast.”

He couldn’t help but grin at her bemused expression. Sure, it was a little mean to laugh at people for being puzzled and flustered, but come on. It was funny. Mostly because she didn’t seem to mean him any actual harm, mishap aside.

And she puzzled him too. He’d never encountered anyone with her powers before. (He’d thought Jinx for a moment, his heart skipping a beat, but no, it wasn’t bad luck that had him trip, just some red light construct. Wasn’t wearing a ring though. And her brother…?

“He is? What’s his name? I thought I knew all the speedster out there…” It wasn’t like he was some sort of authority on speedster, but then also, actually, he sort of was. He was the Fastest Man Alive, after all, had more experience with the Speed Force than anyone else, could feel the pull of it in other speedsters, like a distant, fleeting breeze. Sure, it wasn’t impossible he missed one, it just seemed really, really unlikely.

Which left another option…

He smiled at her own attempt at a joke, ignoring the little bruising of his ego at being called boy. “Well, if that’s what it’ll take, I can’t justly say no. I’m Wally, by the way. Are you local?”

“Yeah?” Wanda asks, a dark eyebrow arched. She knew there were other speedsters in the world, but she thought it would be bad form to assume they were all the same.

“He goes by Quicksilver. His name is Pietro,” Wanda nods. “And I am Wanda. Maximoff,” She holds out her hand. “Some call me the Scarlet Witch,” but with how things had been going in the world, it seemed unlikely that this man would know her by either name. “I think there’s a…” Wanda looks behind her, shading her eyes from the sun as she squinted. “coffee shop around here somewhere.” There was bound to be one close. This New York seemed the same as the last in that respect at least.

Clint sat down in the seat opposite Wanda, and stole her cup. She seemed to be in her own little world, ignoring everyone around her. It still amazed him how she could be so open about who she was, even all these years later. Lucky for him though, as all he had to do to find her was follow the stares.

He raised the stolen cup to his lips and took a sip before pulling a face. “Ugh, what is this?”

Wanda turned her attention toward the man across from her. Recognition was almost delayed because it was hard to believe Clint was sitting there. She felt almost frozen, “Tea,” was all she said before the papers fluttered to the ground and she stood up and tugged him up to hug him.  

And then after a moment. “Is that how you greet a friend who has fallen through to another dimension?” She asks, pulling away so she could glare at him a little. Looking him over, he seemed fine, and so she sat. “We’ve been looking for you… It’s just me and Natasha.”

Nat snorted under her breath, a wry smile twisting her lips. Their disdain for each other was quite interesting to hear, and to keep note of.

“I realized you have many skills ages ago, I hadn’t realized one of those would be tea leaf cultivation in ancient times.” She rolled her eyes sarcastically, then looked over at Wanda more seriously, her expression gone neutral. 

“I’ve been here for six months. I haven’t managed to track anyone down from the team. Unless more people disappeared in the interim between me being gone and you, it’s only us so far. Or they’re hiding very well.”

Wanda chuckles a little bit, it was nice to just joke about something silly. But Tasha’s face turned serious and so did Wanda’s. “Yes well… they wouldn’t be hiding I don’t think. Do you?”

It didn’t make sense, really. Pietro would not be hiding. He would be looking for her. The only person she could see hiding would be Steve, but not really hiding — sort of hiding in plain sight.

“I miss them,” She admits with a shrug. “The world feels off-kilter without them.” She knew that Tasha had spent much more time alone than she had. She was sure the woman preferred it in a lot of ways, but to Wanda, the Avengers were her family. Being without them made her feel almost itchy in a way. A way that she couldn’t scratch. Made her restless.

“What happens if they don’t come through? It’s up to us to figure things out?” She quirks an eyebrow. It seemed… unlikely. They were… well, they were good on the ground. They were fighters. Tasha was good with intel, she was smart. But she wasn’t Tony or Bruce smart, neither of them were.

“I have a friend that’s fond of saying all the wonder we see of magic means there’s equally as much dark and terrible lurking around the corner.” Maybe this was some sort of trial brought on by all their magical tampering. Or maybe it was self-centered to think that everything was a plight personally brought on by the universe itself. After all, nothing yet had been explicitly dark. Zee twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “He’s- a chimp. Literally.”

Perking up at the mention of a speedster, her eyes widen and a grin overcomes her face. “Oh! I know a few of those. And they do love saying they’re the best. Luckily their races are too fast to watch.” She joked, then tipped her head. “Have you two always had your powers?”

Mutants. She wondered if that harbored any similarity to what her world called metas. But, like in her world, those apparently weren’t the only ones that chose to fight crime. A little laugh left her, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “We have an archer too. And a rich man, and an android. No soldier or guns, though.” Pushing her hair back behind her ear, she smiled warmly. “Thank you. Wanda is quite pretty, too… He was. And my mother, and however many generations back both ways. So you all have powers, but they’re all different?”

Wanda blinks a few times, taking a thoughtful sip of her tea, her lips pressed in a line to resist a chuckle. “A chimp…anzee?” She asks, quirking an arched eyebrow. “And does he speak like you and I or is that part of his magic?” Wanda suddenly had questions. “He is quite loquacious either way,” She says with an agreeable nod. At that, Wanda laughed and nod. “It all becomes fisherman’s tales because everything happens too fast for us to see,” She waves a hand. “Foolish.” But her tone was endearing of course. “Our archer is not a mutant, and our soldier is super but — also not a mutant. Just a good man,” She says with a smile as she watches Zee move almost as if to see if she would start emitting her own red light. “My mother was, by all accounts, a normal human. I came by these powers, well — It’s a long story.” She pauses. “I can’t be the first mutant you’ve ever met,” Wanda was sure was not, but she didn’t mind explaining if the woman wanted to listen. “They are. It’s a gene — it triggers differently in everyone. Pietro is my twin and his hair is stark white. But it wasn’t always that way — came with the powers. We used to look very much alike, I mean with the dark features, you know?” She chuckles. “The powers come suddenly and usually in response to, well, something. At least I have heard many stories that start that way.”

Wanda would admit her experience was all anecdotal and personal.

“But yes, different powers. I have never met someone with powers like mine, not the same. As for the speed and strength of my brother — others exist, but It’s all nuanced. Don’t tell him I said that though,” She smirks. “What about you? Magical family all around or just you and your parents? What can you -- well, do?”

Should he be more careful about how to use his powers in this brave new world? Probably yes. Was he going to be? Definitely not.

It wasn’t even out of a sense of defiance or arrogance, it was just simply the force of habit, the fact that Wally had always been more a man of action than a man of hey let’s think this shit through. (That’s why the League had Bats.) He was the kind of man who thought coffee and was already halfway to the nearest coffee shop.

Which was pretty much exactly what he was doing, smell of iced mocha in his hand when suddenly the world came to a terrifying swift stop and his feet weren’t moving anymore and what the fuck?

He watched his coffee fly out of his cup and towards the ground in heart-breaking slowness, following it soon as gravity took a hold of him with a vicious smugness, like it had just been waiting for the chance. He crashed against the ground, rolling with it to jump up, ready for a fight, despite his bleeding shoulder, his shirt ripped. (And he just bought that one.) He got ready to dodge the next blow, but nothing else came, just a woman standing in the street and apologizing.

“What the fuck?” he offered, out loud this time. He carefully dropped out of his fighting stance, and then spared a quick, forlorn look at his coffee. He sighed and looked back, about to call the lady out, but something about how flustered she seemed, how – disappointed, made him stop.

“Yeah, no, I am in fact not the famous underwear model Kellan Lutz, but I do understand the confusion, so it’s cool, we’re cool.”

“Oh, no,” Wanda said under her breath as she grabbed him by the shirt to turn the man slightly so she could see his shoulder better. “I’m so sorry, I should know better,” She mumbles, a little to herself, a little to him. But the reality was that she should have known better. Had it been Pietro, he would have been red hot mad. “I’ll buy you another coffee,” She says following his gaze and then her eyebrows knit together in confusion. No one would accuse Wanda of being up on entertainment — not that kind anyway. “No? I didn’t think you were… whoever that is. You’re saying it with the cadence of a joke — I must seem very humorless right now,” She winces, shaking her head. “Sorry I — my brother is a speedster. I thought — I hoped, but instead I just attacked some random boy,” She gestures to him. “Let me buy you another coffee so I can be absolved of this horrible guilt,” She said with a smirk of her own this time.

At first, she thought she was seeing things. Sort of like what you feel your phone vibrate, but it doesn’t. She had been so hopeful that either Tommy or Pietro would come through to this place that when she saw the tell-tale signs of someone speeding past she shook it off.

No one else seemed to notice, but you didn’t grow up around a speedster, then have one for a song without knowing.

When it happened again, Wanda was rolling up her yoga mat.

The third time she couldn’t tell herself it wasn’t true. What if it was one of her boys -- her brother or her son -- maybe they were looking for her -- maybe. Just maybe. Her hands flew out and in a flash and a sparkly red light enveloped the fast-moving feet, freezing them. It only took a moment for her to realize it was not who she hoped. 

“I am so sorry!” She said quickly, her eyes wide. “I thought -- I thought you were -- well it doesn’t matter. I apologize, are you alright? I know it’s rude, to...” user her powers randomly on strangers. 

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