Fire and Smoke - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter 77

(you're going to be very pleased with me;))

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The small cabin feels exactly the same as it did the last time Wanda and I were here, all that time ago, it feels like. It has somehow retained all of its gloomy, unwelcoming nature whilst somehow, at the same time, almost seeming as though it wants to protect its inhabitants from the world outside. How something so seemingly unpleasant and uncared for can make me feel the complete opposite of that is still something I can't quite understand. It makes me feel at odds with myself. I'm comfortable, and yet I feel on edge.

At first, when Wanda opened that door for me and we stepped into the small wooden structure, it felt as though we actually have stepped back in time again. It seems like mere hours ago that I agreed to try to bring us back in time to help change the fate of her family, and yet, it also seems like who we were then are two people who don't exist anymore. It's not that we've just changed. It's not that we've grown or evolved. It's much more than that.

As soon as we stepped through the threshold I cast a glance at Wanda, trying to gauge her reaction. As soon as my foot stepped through the door it felt like I was brought back and never really left, but Wanda didn't show a sign of feeling the same. It used to be so easy to read her, but just then, I could not have wagered a guess as to what she was thinking. She did bring us here, however, she might have seen the cabin in my memories. It was impossible to tell. Her eyes, dark in the lack of light, moved across the cabin, her expression vacant. I so wanted to ask her, or to tell her it will come back, that I was here for her, whatever she needed, but I kept quiet, her pain forever etched on my heart. My words seemed insufficient to weigh against all that she lost, because of me. I'm not even sure she's still fully comprehended that it is all my fault. And so the guilt weighing down on me I caved.

And that vacant, empty Wanda was the last I've seen of her. I've not had the chance to grow a pair and ask her since she's been cooped up in the bedroom, not making a sound except for slamming the door shut after her for the past few, long hours. She might be sleeping. She might be crying or she might be just sitting there, staring emptily at the wall. I wouldn't know. Time always seemed to move differently in the cabin with her on the other side of that wall. Time. Something we seem to always run out of, her and me. A funny joke, it seems, that time is the one thing we don't have even though I'm supposed to be able to move through time. I still don't understand how or why I can't do it now, when all I want so desperately is to take us back to before it happened. Time.

Space, I continue musing as I scoot slightly further down on my favorite couch, looking through the dusty window at the sprawling, endless trees, slightly swaying like they're dancing to a silent song in the breeze. The silence must make me oddly introspective. I know that just as the vastness of untouched landscape surrounding us outside the cabin, that same space that is what I also need to learn to give Wanda. I glance over at the untouched cup of tea outside of her door, sighing softly. I suck at comforting. Lately, it feels like I've sucked at most everything. It's hard to remember one win I've had.

I turn my head to try to summon the strength to continue reading that stupid book in Hungarian I once started. It lies there, open, on the old rickety table, taunting me. I could just reach out and grab it. But it seems as though I've lost control of my limbs. And so I just lay there, helplessly staring at the book, too lazy to do anything about my predicament. Maybe if I had Wanda's powers I could reach it and then would read it. Maybe.

The hours tick by and I barely move. Instead, I lay there, watching the stars outside wander across the night sky, so steadfast in their course. Always the same path, and always the same conclusion. Wanda is as unsurprising as the stars, staying in her bedroom. I ache to go to her, wanting nothing more than to at the least just sit next to her in silence as we've done so many times before, but it feels wrong now, a task as mammoth as climbing to the top of Mount Wundagore.