knife_bender | MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

"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.

"Fuck, Annie," Diego said, ducking his head down to bump his forehead against her temple. "I'm so sorry. I wish--I wish I could have done something."

"You're doing so much now," Annie told him softly, her voice cracking just slightly as she leaned into him. "I was so scared, and so -- helpless. Trapped. It just...I feel like I did after Deep, you know?"

It wasn't a perfect comparison, but the sense of feeling used and helpless called her back to that night in the conference room all the same. And in a lot of ways, it was much worse -- being violated by a close friend whom Annie had thought she could trust was going to take a long time for her to get over. She might never.

"I know," he said quietly. "I am so sorry."

It really was unfair Annie had to go through something like this again.

"Where's Wanda now?" Asking for a friend. A friend who would easily get torn to Reed Richards-like ribbons if he went up against her, but still.

That was going to take a second to answer, considering how complicated Annie felt about it -- even after everything she'd just said.

She also hadn't actually said it out loud yet, aside from telling Stephen that she'd miss her. That had been the most acknowledgement she'd allowed herself to have, because Annie had known that when she finally said it out loud, it was going to be real, and she hadn't been ready.

She still wasn't ready.

"She's dead," she murmured, and oh, look, there were the tears she'd been staving off this whole time. "America took her to her kids, like she wanted, and -- they were terrified of her. It was all wrong, and...I think she realized what she'd done, then."

She figured Diego could fill in the blanks from there -- that it hadn't been Annie or Stephen or America who had ultimately taken Wanda down, but Wanda herself.

Fuck, of course that was how it ended. In a way that allowed Annie no chance at closure with her friend.

Though part of Diego was relieved Wanda was dead so she couldn't hurt anyone like that again. He did have enough self-preservation skills to not voice that out loud. He could tell Annie still felt something there for her, even after being mind controlled.

"Tell me what you need," he said. "I don't think I can say anything to make any of this better."

Could anyone, really?

"I can draw you a bath? Or take you somewhere to punch something?"

Annie wouldn't have even begrudged him those vengeful thoughts; a part of her was a little grateful that Wanda couldn't hurt any more innocent people, too. (And while she hadn't quite put this together for herself in so many words yet, she also knew that Wanda had wanted to make sure she couldn't do that again. Annie was sure of it. She'd been an Avenger in the end, no matter what else she'd been before.)

"A bath sounds nice," she told him almost immediately, swiping at her eyes and nestling herself more firmly against his side (which would make it hard for him to get up and do that, but she needed her husband more than a bath right at this moment, anyway.) "I've done enough punching for a little while, I think -- in the end, we were out in the middle of nowhere again, so it was all I had. Oh, and there's this thing magic people can do where, like, they can jump into the head of the version of them that exists in any universe, and Stephen was dead in that last one. That's how I lost my shoe. I fought a like...reanimated corpse."

So, actually, a bath was a nice idea for several reasons.

"A zombie took your shoe," Diego said lightly. "One of the cooler ways to lose a shoe, I think."

"My shoe got stuck in a zombie," Annie corrected, making a little face and clearly trying for levity herself. "It was gross. I also got roofied for a little while."

That covered...pretty much all the bases, right? She'd skipped over a few things -- though surely sometime over the next few weeks, the other pieces would work their way out (the, 'Oh, I saw a minotaur!' and, 'Wanda folded herself up like origami and came out of a gong,' of it all, you know), but. For now, and for as sad and shaky and tired as she was, that was probably enough.

"I was so scared I wouldn't make it back to you," she added, sliding a hand over Diego's knee. "Or that I'd make it back to a different version of you, after all this."

Maybe one with an eyepatch or something.

"I was worried too." Obviously not to the extent she was, but he'd be doing more research the next time one of Annie's friends asked for a favor. "I'm so glad you're okay."

Physically. He knew that emotionally was a whole other thing.

"Mostly," Annie replied lightly. "I've got some bumps, but nothing worse than what your brother or Black Noir's done before."

And what she wasn't saying -- because she didn't want to think about it, and maybe that was something to be covered if she ever did get someone's phone number from Wong -- was that the thing that hurt the most about the damage she'd taken was that she knew a lot of it was the result of Wanda taking no care with puppeteering Annie's body for her.

It made everything hurt more with every twinge, and she would just have to...deal with that.

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