Wanda & Illyana; who you are in other places

[xp-magik.livejournal.com]

Illyana meets Wanda for the first time - sort of. It goes unexpectedly. For both of them.

It had been a quiet day on Wanda's floor with not many people being at home or around in their various apartments and living quarters. So she'd propped open her door, thrown open the windows to let in a breeze and had turned up the music. She was taking some personal time to catch up on reading and not working for once, a change of pace for her.

Instead of going through reams of paper, she was enjoying the breeze on her couch with an open book and a glass of wine. The open door was not only to take advantage of the quiet but was an invitation if someone was passing by and wanted to stop in.

The music had drawn Illyana - she hadn't heard a lot of music for a long time - and she stopped in the doorway, just to listen for a minute. She hadn't intended even to go in, until she caught of glimpse of the woman sitting in the room. There was something - she took a quiet, barefoot step forward, reaching up to push her hair behind her ears - something about her, about that uncontrolled fall of hair, the tilt of the head -

The woman's face came into view, and the blonde girl - stopped, mid-step. Just froze, feeling the blood drain from her face, the sudden and uncontrollable rush of her heart in her throat, shock so deep that it started in her sternum and radiated out in paralyzing waves. No. No. No.

Something was off and Wanda lifted her head suddenly, looking around with sharp eyes. When she spotted the young girl, who looked too skinny for her own good and who was looking decidedly terrified, she started, sloshing her wine a little. For someone to have made it that far into her apartment without Wanda even being aware ...

But questions could come later considering how pale the child had gotten. Setting down her glass, she slid to the edge of the couch and asked quietly, trying not to spook the girl, "Hello. Are you alright?" Wanda was starting to stand, was going to offer her couch to sit down on for a moment.

It was Wanda's voice that startled her out of her shock, an agonized recognition flooding her face and parting her lips as she started visibly. And bolted, with a ragged inhale, hitting the doorjamb painfully with a shoulder on her way out.

Wanda's eyes grew wide. Running away was not a reaction she'd anticipated from her simple question. She'd never seen the girl before, so it was either a case that there was something going on that didn't involve Wanda or ... well, there really wasn't much else she could figure out. Someone would have told her if there were any new students who had been impacted by Magneto, so it couldn't be that.

After a moment's hesitation, she left her book and wine behind and went after her, concerned. Thankfully, it wasn't that hard to find her again. Wanda came across her a few hallways over and called out, "That really was not a very reassuring answer to my question," she called out.

The blonde girl had come to a shaky stop next to a chair obviously meant for visitors, but rather than sitting in it, she had sunk down next to it. Even from several meters away, her breathing sounded uneven, and she was pulling a thin chain around her neck, almost rhythmically.

She didn't seem to be able to make herself look up at Wanda, although her hands stilled momentarily when she heard Wanda's voice. Then she pulled on the chain again, eyes locked forward, and took a breath to steady herself, and said, stumblingly, "I - you just - I used to know - I'm sorry." The last word came out hoarse and raw, like it hurt, an apology for more than interrupting a quiet evening.

Instead of coming closer in fear of chasing her off or possibly giving the poor thing a heart attack, Wanda stayed where she was and sank down onto her haunches. While not completely at eye level, it was better than towering over her. "As far as I am aware of, there is nothing you need to be sorry for," Wanda said calmly, keeping her voice low and steady. "I seem to be causing you some distress. Would you like me to leave? I could call someone else?"

Scott, perhaps? Haller?

Illyana shook her head, trying - and mostly failing - to regain control of her breathing. Her eyes flickered up a few times, confirming something, but she kept her gaze mostly on her own knees. "I know," she said, almost to herself. "It wasn't you. I just, I wasn't expecting . . . " Suddenly she did look up at Wanda, mouth firming against whatever internal struggle she was fighting. "Do you - do you get to see your dad now?" she asked, almost demanded, like it was not only important but vital to know.

Wanda froze and her eyes widened slightly. No one besides Lorna referenced Magneto in such a way to her and even her half-sister didn't, not in that way. But this child was asking as if there was an option, and a good one, to see her father. She kept her voice calm, though, as she shook her head. "No, I do not," she said slowly, trying to place the pieces of the bizarre little puzzle. "It is an incredibly complicated issue and I have not seen him in many years."

She took a deep breath. "Perhaps we should start over? Would you like to come back to my apartment?" The girl was so skinny... "I was just about to make myself lunch if you would like some. It sounds like we have a few things to talk about."

Once she'd looked - really looked - at Wanda's face, it was almost like she couldn't bring herself to look away. Illyana hesitated for a long moment, and finally nodded, letting the chain drop back under her shirt with a surprisingly heavy rasp of metal on metal. She stood up unsteadily, keeping her distance - not like she was afraid of Wanda, but the way someone large moves around delicate glasswork, as though she might accidentally break something.

They didn't talk on the way back and Wanda let her go where she wanted once they got back to the apartment. She busied herself in the kitchen, pulling out items to make sandwiches and a pre-made salad she'd stored in the fridge the previous night. Wanda glanced over across the kitchen counters and made a guess, "Are you Illyana? You are, I believe, one of our more recent arrivals."

Illyana nodded from across the room; she had perched herself almost nervously on the edge of a chair, like she was still ready to take flight at any moment, but the rush of adrenaline was gone, and she looked much more tired in the bright afternoon sunlight. She was watching everything carefully, eyes darting to the exits every so often, but never for long. "You're Wanda," she said, not a question. "Wanda Maximoff."

It was tempting to try to make a joke but Wanda had a feeling it wouldn't go very far. "Yes. I would say good guess but I have a feeling you are not guessing." Precognition, perhaps? "It has been some time since someone ran away from me like that. I am happy to listen if you would like to fill me in on what I seem to be missing here."

The sandwiches were thick and overflowing with sandwich meat and cheese; she added the salad to the plate and found some soda that someone had left in her fridge. Wanda brought the food over to Illyana, put them on the coffee table near her and retreated back to the kitchen. In part it was to get her own food but it was more to give the younger woman space.

The girl picked at the crust of her sandwich, but didn't move to eat; she glanced up at Wanda. "I knew you," she said simply, the only indication of the effort this took in the hand that went back to the chain around her neck. She rolled it between her fingers unconsciously, back and forth. "Not . . . you, I mean. But - I don't know how to - another version of you."

Wanda rescued her abandoned glass of wine. She was probably going to need this. "Another version?" she asked, her own lunch untouched. Leaning her hip against the kitchen counter, she really looked at Illyana, Whatever happened previously, it had left its mark on her. "As in ... alternate reality?"

Well, weirder things had happened...

"I think so." The girl looked down. "I'm not from where, where she was from, but we met in another place. I thought maybe when - but I'm from here, so this is where I came back to." She was quiet for a moment, and then said, still rolling the chain between her thumb and forefinger, "She was nice to me."

It was automatic, a quick look through the veil that her chaos powers opened for her. Alternate realities were nothing to mess with ... but then her her thoughts were derailed and she nearly dropped the wine glass in utter shock. Everyone, everything, was connected in some way. Wanda's powers let her see those connections and manipulate them and she was used to seeing different configurations but ...

The lines connected to Illyana were wrong. While still a vibrant red, they looked almost ... burned? As in burned flesh stretched too tightly across bone. It reminded her of how Amanda had described Wanda's own aura after Chthon's influence.

She took a deep breath and drained her wine before whispering, "Illyana, child, where were you?" This was a child, barely into her teens. Who had damaged her that deeply?

Illyana shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know if it has a real name," she said. "We called it Limbo, but - I don't know if it was really between everywhere or not. It felt like it sometimes."

Limbo. That was a starting point. Carefully, so as not to spook her, Wanda walked around so she could sink down onto the couch directly across from Illyana's chair. "I am so sorry," she said after a moment. "Listen, Illyana, this is not an ... an interrogation, okay? I will not push you into answering things you do not want. I am hear to listen if you wish to speak." She smiled. "I am glad, though, that the other me was nice to you."

Illyana had been watching Wanda when a sudden look - wounded, guilty remembrance - flashed across her face. She looked away, her grip on the chain around her neck getting visibly tighter. She looked like she was trying to say something - or anything - but couldn't.

"It is alright," Wanda soothed, her words coming out not in English but in Rom. If Illyana had spent any time with any version of herself, then there was a very good chance she'd at least know some of the language. "You are safe, I promise."

"You weren't," Illyana burst out with, in the same language. Her shoulders were a tight, miserable line, and her fingers had given up moving on her chain in favour of just wrapping it around her hand and clutching it tight enough to dig a white line in her skin. A normal girl might have been crying by now, but her eyes were dry. "You weren't," she repeated in English, more quietly. She glanced at the door, but couldn't bring herself to move away. Selfish, selfish . . .

Wanda firmly pushed down the hot seed of rage that was building up at whatever forces had been at work to damage Illyana this much. Carefully, so slowly she could almost hear her bones creak in protest, she moved from the couch and perched on the coffee table, closing the space between them. "Illyana, I do not know what you have seen or what has been done to you." Wanda took a deep breath and continued, "Or what you were forced to do to survive. But if this Wanda was anything like the person I am, then I can honestly tell you she would be so grateful to know that you were here and alive."

"She was just trying to help me get home," Illyana said, very quietly. Not her, it's not her, it's not - There were subtle differences, if you looked for them, so she made herself look. Not a ghost. Not - something worse. "That's all she ever did. She didn't tell me - " Despite herself, she met Wanda's eyes with her own bleak gaze. "I didn't want to do it. But I couldn't leave her like - " She cut herself off from an older, worse memory. "It was worse to leave her like that, there."

Wanda met Illyana's bleak stare with a calm one of her own, though what she felt internally was far from calm. It wasn't like she'd woken prepared for an emotionally charged day. "This is your story," she said slowly. "I am not your Wanda but I can promise that you are safe with me and that includes telling what you want and what you can in your own time. If you want to tell me everything now, I have nothing but time. If you want to tell me three days from now at three in the morning, my door is always open."

Illyana hesitated, gaze dropping; the excuse to stop there, unconfessed, so that nobody else knew what she was - that was a strong temptation. But this was - she was, even though she also wasn't, Wanda, and the thought of Wanda not knowing what she'd done hurt, somehow.

"We were trying to get out," Illyana said finally, keeping her voice absolutely even, if quiet. "Something went wrong, because of - because of what happens to people there." She abruptly loosened her grip on the chain, and it dropped back beneath her shirt, leaving angry red welts criss-crossing her hand. "He - I don't like saying his name, just, it's dangerous - he took her over. I don't think there was anything left. I don't know, it happened - fast."

She almost hadn't fought. She didn't say that. She took a breath, instead, bracing herself for the next part.

"I had to kill her," Illyana said, barely above a whisper, her voice wavering for the first time - and only a little bit. It evened out when she continued, regaining control, "I think - she wasn't there, after what happened, but - I don't know. I just couldn't leave her like that."

In Wanda's experience, she had seen and heard of some truly terrible things. It was simply a part of the job and a part of the reality she had signed up for all those years ago. But what this child was describing made her heart hurt and she knew this was only the tip of the iceberg. This was not even touching how Illyana had ended up in Limbo in the first place; this was the end of that story.

"You never should have been there in the first place," Wanda said at last, her voice firm in an attempt to not let leak the fury she felt on Illyana's behalf. "You have done so much that someone your age should never have to do. I am so sorry that your Wanda was taken and even more sorry that you had to do what you did. Killing her -" She took a deep breath and passed her hand over her eyes. "You are not to blame. Illyana, I can only imagine what you carry around with you after that but she would not have wanted you to carry that burden."

She let her hands drop back to her lap. "Of course, it is not as simple as that, is it? It never is."

Illyana rubbed at the lines she'd dug into her hand, and lifted a thin shoulder, acknowledging but not accepting this release from blame. Although she wasn't shaking as much anymore, and the bitter taste of adrenaline had faded in her mouth, she was beginning to seem a little bit shellshocked, the dizzy, disoriented look of someone who has survived catastrophe.

Reaching over, Wanda picked up the plate and held out to Illyana. "You have been through hell," she said quietly. "This is a good place to heal and to rest. And whatever you need, you only have to ask me."

Illyana took the plate automatically with more-or-less steady fingers; but she didn't know how to respond to Wanda, so she just said, "Thanks," quietly. Her voice was even again, though, and she looked at Wanda like she was trying to memorize her face - or maybe replace a different memory with a new one. Then she pulled a piece off the sandwich and ate it. "I didn't mean to - um - interrupt. Your day, I mean." She didn't look embarrassed so much as like she was vaguely remembering 'manners' as a concept.

"Tch, no," Wanda scoffed gently, leveraging herself up so she could wander back into the kitchen to find her own sandwich and to pour another glass of wine. "If I had wanted solitude, I would have had it. The door is only open when I truly do not mind company or interruptions." She found her way back to her original seat and sat down with a sigh. "You can stay as long as you like," Wanda continued. "And you can leave whenever you want. There is no pressure, though I certainly do not mind the company."

The blonde girl nodded, reaching over to pick at her sandwich again - piece by piece, inspecting each element out of habit, though for what was unclear. She pulled a knee up, protectively, although paradoxically it was almost relaxed for her; she didn't look like she was about to bolt for the nearest exit anymore.

Wanda let the music fill the space between them as she tucked into her own sandwich. Communicating wasn't simply about words and all she could hope was that Illyana was receiving what she was trying to convey. Only time, she thought with a tired sigh, would tell her if her attempts had worked.