knife_bender | MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

At least Annie knew she had likely worried Diego by not calling or texting for...however long. What day was it, even? Her phone had died back at Kamar-Taj the first time, and then....

You know, weirdly, Maria Rambeau had not really taken care not to break the little piece of glass in Annie's back pocket, when they'd scuffled? So even if she'd been able to charge it, that was a very lost cause.

So when she finally made her way to her apartment -- limping slightly, probably smelling like a zombie and down one shoe -- she was immediately apologetic as she opened the door.

"Hey," she called with a faint smile as she let herself in, entirely unsurprised by the pacing. (But she did feel really bad about it, even if it had been thoroughly not her fault.)

The relived sigh Diego let out when the door opened probably could have been heard across the island. Diego immediately rushed over to Annie, pulling her into a hug, not noticing at the moment that she was likely in pain.

"What the hell happened?" he asked. "...where's your shoe?"

Yeah, that was just the slightest wince, though Annie was wrapping her arms around Diego anyway. "It's such a long story," she replied softly, actually sighing out some tension she didn't realize she'd been holding onto. "I'm so happy to see you, you don't even know."

She legitimately had not known if she'd get to again, for a little while there. It had been one of the prevailing thoughts that her screaming, trapped mind had circled back to while she'd been under Wanda's control: whether she'd ever even get to see him, or her friends, or her in-laws, or the island again.

Flip though she might have been back at Kamar-Taj, things were sinking in a little more now that the adrenaline was really wearing off.

Edited 2022-12-07 13:46 (UTC)

"I've been losing my mind," Diego admitted, pulling away slightly to get a closer look at Annie. "It's been days--are you okay?"

"I'm okay," Annie assured him, reaching a hand up to gently rub her thumb along his jaw. (She'd at least washed her hands at Kamar-Taj, even if she really needed a shower.) "Mostly, anyway. I'm so sorry, babe. My phone died, like, right away."

A pause, and then she circled back -- he had asked another question, too. "My shoe is in a dead guy's chest a couple universes away."

Diego needed the whole story once she'd settled down a little more, of course. (Though getting into the whole story was going to start to make a lot of this...real in a way Annie wasn't sure she could confront, just yet.)

...

"...I thought you were just picking up a kid?" If he had known dead guy's were going to be involved he would have wanted to tag along.

God, if Annie had known...you know what, no, she would have still wanted him to stay home, just in case Wanda decided perfect aim was a great way to help her.

"Wanda wasn't totally honest about what we were doing when she asked me for help," Annie said quietly, shaking her head. "She didn't want to just...use that girl's powers. She was going to sacrifice her in the process."

And needless to say, Annie had changed her mind about helping when that had come to light.

"It all got really complicated." And sad. Really, really sad.

"Holy shit," Diego murmured. He started moving Annie towards the couch. "Here, sit down. Take your shoe off."

Not like she needed it anymore.

Edited 2022-12-07 14:15 (UTC)

Annie gave a little huff that was almost a laugh. That was sort of funny. She did just have the one shoe, didn't she? Shoes came in pairs. The idea of taking off one shoe was sort of hilarious.

Or maybe she was starting to get a little hysterical, now that things were actually settling and this was reality again? Maybe it was that one.

"I'm a little beat up," she told him, allowing herself to be led over to the couch easily and keeping at least one hand on Diego at all times. Clinginess when one or both of them had been through something had always been a theme with them, and it wasn't changing now. "Nothing major. Couple bruises. What day is it?"

It had been Sunday when Wanda had asked for help, and then...like, it felt like it had been a couple days, but it was hard to tell when you were universe-jumping and being drugged by hot wizards.

"It's Wednesday." And wasn't that a worrying question to answer? "Babe, I'm so confused right now."

He was confused, but she looked like she was about to cry so he didn't want to hound her with questions.

"I'm going to do my best, but it was confusing to live through," Annie told him, slipping off her shoe and then...like, deciding that was a lot of effort and leaning into Diego. "The girl Wanda wanted can open portals to other universes. You know how Summer always talks about how anything is possible in the multiverse? I lived that. I was in a place where I was made of paint for a minute."

And that was also sort of funny, so don't mind how Annie actually did start laughing there, tired and shaky. "I was paint!"

Paint! That was hilarious!

And also one of her best friends was dead, and Annie would never get to make peace with her over what had happened.

But first: paint! Lol!

Diego's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. Like, he knew in theory that you could be in a paint universe but hearing that his wife had been there and was laughing sort of crazily about it was worrying.

"I'm gonna get you a White Claw," he said, pulling away slightly to go to the fridge. "Keep talking, I can hear you, you just need a White Claw."

Or four.

That sounded like a good idea. Annie would gladly take a White Claw. (Maybe eventually something stronger, too? But she'd start with White Claws and their comforting fizz and general lack of flavor.)

"Okay. Sorry," Annie offered, taking a deep breath to try to settle down a little more. "So, like -- Wanda took me with her to this ancient temple to get the girl. America. That's the kid's name, I'm not just being patriotic."

But she was babbling a little! That was probably an improvement over laughing.

"And then as soon as we got there, I found out we weren't just...borrowing her, and I --"

How to put it? How to phrase what had happened then.

"And then Wanda and I just weren't on the same side anymore," she concluded, her tone turning very sad. "She flew me there and when I wasn't on board with killing America, she dropped me. Literally. From like, hundreds of feet."

"Jesus fucking Christ." None of that added up in Diego's head. Granted, he didn't know Wanda well (for some weird reason), but he always assumed she was a pretty nice woman, and he knew she was a big time superhero.

But if Annie's universe taught him anything, it's that being a superhero didn't really mean shit when it came to your morals.

Diego came back holding about six White Claws. He had drank all of his beer waiting for Annie to get back, so some were for him as well. "You didn't actually hit the ground, did you?"

He figured if she had she'd be more of a wreck, like Maeve had been.

"No, one of the guys protecting America from Wanda -- his name is Stephen -- has a cape that can fly all on its own. Like Aladdin's magic carpet," Annie replied, because that really was what it had reminded her of. "I know it sounds crazy, but his cape caught me before I could hit the ground, and flew me up to them."

She gave a helpless shrug as she reached for one of the White Claws. "Magic."

Fucking magic.

(Also, she was never going to call it a cloak.)

"It does sound crazy," Diego agreed, opening up a can for himself before pressing himself close against Annie again. He laid his free hand on her knee, giving it a squeeze. "But if a magic cape saved your life then I'm all for it."

He took a swig of his drink. "What happened with Wanda? She didn't--the girl's still alive, right?"

Annie faltered for a second, an expression of pure grief crossing her features before she recovered. "America is fine," she replied, stepping around the question of what had happened to Wanda. She'd -- get there. "She's a great kid. Working on controlling her powers a little -- that's how I ended up in a paint universe -- but she'll get there. She's safe with Stephen and the other sorcerers now. Which, by the way, those guys? Super not into electrical power at all, so you can imagine how useful I was a lot of the time. That's what happened to my phone."

Next time she got called out on something like this, she was taking a portable battery pack with her. Fuck's sake.

"It's okay," he said, moving his arm so it was around Annie's shoulders now. "I knew something was wrong when you didn't call--but I wasn't sure if it was a different universe thing or what."

Having had come from a universe where cell phones didn't exist, it had been an easy assumption to make.

She snuggled into his side, breathing out another sigh and taking obvious comfort in being home and with Diego. She hadn't yet touched on the really awful parts of what had happened -- for example, why she had lost a shoe to a corpse -- and she would, but this was soothing and genuinely helping her calm down to process what had happened, too.

"I would have called if I could have," Annie promised, though as she was saying that, she realized he had a point -- it was entirely possible that 'Go on red' universe hadn't had any cell towers that would have worked for her, anyway. "It got pretty bad, Diego. Like...Wanda's really powerful. Really, really powerful. She once took over a whole town and made them think they were in sitcoms."

Given the choice, Annie would have loved to have been trapped in a situation where her supposed landlord kept interrupting suggestive shenanigans between her, Wanda and Stephen, or something like that.

She also belatedly realized she'd used the present tense. Not thinking about that, just yet.

Edited 2022-12-07 15:22 (UTC)

"We...knew this before this week?" Diego asked, using the 'we're married' royal form of 'we'. "And she's living in this apartment building?"

Wanda, at least take over someone's mansion in town.

"We knew," Annie told him with a tiny smile. "She's been keeping a low profile here. It almost feels like she was, like...doing penance? And that whole thing is when she lost her kids and her husband, too."

And then Wanda had figured out she could have her boys again, and...here we were.

The hardest part was that Annie understood. She really, really did. She didn't condone any of it, from where she was sitting, but -- in possession of that kind of power and hurting as bad as Wanda did (as she had), Annie couldn't swear she wouldn't act similarly.

"Jesus," he murmured. Then he remembered how they got on this subject. "How bad did it get this time?"

Shoe-losing bad, for sure.

Annie was quiet for a moment, looking down at her hands and playing with the pop tab on her White Claw can. "She did it to me," she finally offered, her voice barely above a whisper. "She took over my mind. Used me to hurt people."

It wasn't objectively the worst thing Wanda had done in the course of all of this -- everyone seemed to think of dreamwalking as the magical equivalent of a war crime, and stalking a teenager with intent to kill her was absolutely not, like...cool.

But being used as a weapon while her trapped mind screamed in protest was going to stick with Annie for the rest of her life.

"What?" Diego asked, the question tinged with anger. "That's not--you don't do that."

Diego had grown up in a household with someone who could take over minds. Rumoring your brother into peeing his pants was totally different than hurting people. That was a line you didn't cross.

"Well, she did," Annie replied, a little wobbly to have such full-throated support behind the idea that what Wanda had done to her was wrong. "We had a ton of power where she did it -- like, a mini robot army, actually, it would have been pretty cool if I hadn't...."

She trailed off, and tried again. "I mean, the good news is that I flew? Like, really flew. Wanda knew what to do with my powers better than I did."

The bad news was everything else. The sense of violation. How gross she felt now. How torturous it had been to essentially watch herself doing things.

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