Chapter 34: Disenchantment


The colors, the fragrances as well

Are dispelled.

Who in my world

Is a constant?

The wilderness of life's vicissitudes—

I will pass through it today,

And will not be deceived in shallow dreams

And will not be inebriated.

~Anonymous, "Iroha"


Wanda's mind woke up before her body did, trapping her in a pit of her own thoughts.

She remembered everything: all the terrible parts of her past before her life in Westview that she hadn't thought about in years, every weird thing that happened during her time in Westview that she'd ignored, or chosen to forget. It was all so clear now.

Vision had somehow found out what she'd been too afraid to tell him, that she had been using the Infinity Stones. She'd used the Reality Stone to conceive the twins, and Monica Rambeau had believed she used it to bring Vision and Natasha to life. What had happened to Vision, Billy, Tommy, and Nat when she lost connection to the Reality Stone? She couldn't sense them.

She couldn't sense anyone.

If only she'd had the courage to tell Vision the truth about the Infinity Stones when she had the chance, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Would they have been able to figure it out together, to find another way?

Her connection to the Infinity Stones had been such a constant in her life for so long that she felt their absence like a missing limb.

Even before she'd gotten the ability to sense other minds from HYDRA's experiments, she'd always sensed a connection to Pietro. Her mind had never before felt no one else but herself.

She'd never felt so alone.

These thoughts circled through her mind for what felt like hours before she started getting sensations from her body. Something was holding her hands still, her fingers stiff. There was something across her forehead.

Where was she? Why couldn't she sense anyone?

She was under a blanket, but there was a slight draft on her cheek. There was an electronic whirring sound from somewhere to her left.

"Hey, you awake?" a soft voice asked.

She knew that voice, though she hadn't heard it in decades: Sam Wilson.

She forced her eyes open. The room was set up like a hotel room, a general brownish beige color scheme with impersonal furnishings, but it also contained what looked like high-tech medical monitoring equipment. There was a window, showing a gray sky and a light flurry of snow.

Sam was sitting in a chair next to her bed. But he didn't look any older than he had the last time she'd seen him. It made no sense.

"Was it all a dream?" she asked.

"You mean you putting a whole town in a pocket dimension? No, that happened."

Was that what she'd done?

She sat up slowly. Her hands were encased in braces that kept her fingers immobilized, and there was some kind of tight-fitting cap attached to her head with a chin strap.

But she didn't care about those at the moment.

That it hadn't been a dream, and Sam was here at her bedside instead of Vision, led her to one conclusion.

"Vision's gone, isn't he?"

"He went back to Westview to get your kids. He said he'll be back as soon as he can. I gotta say, you're too young to have teenage kids. That weirds me out."

Her heart lit up. "They're alive? Vision and our children are alive?"

Sam looked at her with sympathy. Clearly he hadn't realized she might think they were dead. "I haven't heard if they found your kids yet, but Vision's the one who brought you here. He's fine."

"Thank God."

After a minute of letting the great news wash over her, she looked down at the braces on her hands, wondering what came next.

"They put those on you because they didn't want you to accidentally break anything when you came out of the anesthesia," Sam said. He flipped a couple of buckles and took them off her.

She stretched and wiggled her fingers. "Thank you." She reached up and felt the thing on her head.

"That's something S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to block telepathy," Sam explained. "Some people think...we think your mind powers might've been affecting the thoughts of people around you."

That was the same thing Monica Rambeau had accused her of. "I haven't even tried to get into people's minds since I worked for Ultron."

"No one thinks you were doing it on purpose. I think it was more of a psychic defense; you were working so hard to keep yourself positive that you were broadcasting that same energy to everyone around you. Bucky and I noticed it when we came to visit you, and Clint noticed it when you were staying with him. Bruce figures you being close to the Infinity Stones made that broadcast a whole lot stronger than it should have been."

The cap felt like a mosaic of thin metal plates in plastic and padding. If it was blocking telepathic energy, that explained why she couldn't sense Sam's mind, even though he was right in front of her. And if it was true that she was influencing people's thoughts, it explained why Westview had always been such a kind, accepting place to her and her family; it wasn't that the people were really like that, she was just forcing people to act like that.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't know I was doing it." She tilted her head back, squeezing her eyes closed to keep from crying. "It's like I can't help screwing things up."

"Hey, it's okay. You didn't hurt anyone."

"I'm not sure that's true. There was a woman named Monica Rambeau. She told me what I was doing, but I didn't believe her." She had kept that a secret for so long, but finding out Monica Rambeau had been right, had been telling the truth, made the weight of the guilt suffocating, and it was possible the lingering effects of the anesthesia had lowered her inhibitions, or that she felt Sam was someone she could confide in, but for whatever reason, she couldn't endure keeping the secret any longer. "I hurt her. I didn't mean to. It was an accident. I think I might have killed her."

"You didn't," Sam stated. "Rambeau's alive. You shot her through the interdimensional barrier around Westview, but she survived it. It changed her, like the Mind Stone changed you. She's got powers now."

"But she's okay?"

"Yeah."

Relief of the guilt she'd been suppressing for years washed over her. She burried her face in her hands for a moment.

Sam sat beside her. "I know this is rough. You had a good life, and now you find out your life wasn't exactly what you thought it was, and it's never going to be the same again. But everyone's okay. You'll get through it."

"I was controlling people's minds without even knowing it. How am I supposed to get past that? How can I ever trust myself around people again?"

"We'll figure something out," Sam assured her. "I bet now that you know you were doing it, you'll figure out a way to stop."

She shook her head. "How? How am I supposed to figure that out?"

He didn't have a ready answer.

"How will Vision ever trust me again?"

She wasn't asking him. She was asking herself, or maybe just releasing the question into the universe like a prayer.

"Vision will understand," Sam said.

"I was being selfish, and cowardly. I was too afraid of losing what I had to consider what I was doing. I'm not sure there's anything to understand more than that."

Sam put his hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "You didn't even know what you were doing. And look at all the great stuff that came out of it. You brought Nat and Vision back to life, you gave thousands of people twenty-something extra years of life, you gave Monica Rambeau superpowers, and you raised two kids."

That finally got Wanda to smile.

"Why don't you tell me about them?" Sam prompted gently. "What are they like?"