The meeting took place the next day in the hotel room where Tommy was staying. Wanda met up with Billy, who'd told his parents he was going to go hang out with some friends, then portaled into the hotel room.

Vision and Tommy—or Speed as Vision said he preferred to be called—were waiting for them. They rose to meet them.

"Hey. You must be Tommy," Billy said, stepping forward.

"Yep. And you must be Billy."

They started at each other for a moment. The resemblance between them was undeniable, and when they were together, a similarity to Wanda and Vision's facial features was also evident—though perhaps that was just Wanda's wishful thinking.

"Nice to meet you?" Billy said uncertainly.

Wanda wanted to rush in and somehow dispel the awkwardness, but Vision placed a hand on her arm.

"Let's give them time to talk," he suggested.

She let him guide her out into the hallway. He phased into his human face right as he opened the door.

"When's your birthday?" they heard Billy ask before the door shut behind them.

"What if they don't get along?" Wanda asked anxiously.

"From what I gleaned from the Broadcast, that would not be unusual for them." He took her hands. "They both wanted this meeting. What relationship they have is up to them. I know that is frustrating, but that is a reality parents must accept."

She'd been standing exactly here a few days ago when Vision comforted her after her first meeting with Tommy, after he'd said about three words to her. Vision had assured her that the reunion had gone a lot better than it seemed, that he just needed time to emotionally process, and that what she might feel as coldness was Tommy's typical teenager taciturnity.

"How are you already so much better at this parenting thing than I am?" she asked jokingly.

"I have read fifty-seven books on parenting since last Thursday," he jokingly replied.

Wanda laughed, then curled up against him and let herself indulge in the feeling of his arms around her. "Thank you for all of this."

He held her for a minute, until a young woman in a uniform carrying two boxes of pizza and a post-it note walked toward them down the hall.

"Lesson number one: never ask anyone to face an emotional crisis on an empty stomach," Vision commented. He addressed the pizza delivery woman. "One pepperoni, one veggie for room 914?"

"Yep."

They returned to the room bearing the pizzas.

Tommy and Billy were sitting across from each other on the beds, chatting amiably.

"...by the back door. Snake goes in and starts just loitering around the pawn shop, totally looking like she's going to rob the place, makes sure her knife's hanging out and everything..." Tommy broke off his story to announce with delight, "Pizza's here!"

"That sounded like an interesting story," Wanda said. "Reminds me of some of the shoplifting Pietro and I did growing up on the streets."

"Really?" Tommy asked, intrigued.

"Your mother was quite a miscreant in her youth," Vision noted.

"My youth? Don't forget before the Blip I was an internationally wanted fugitive for two years. I was trained in stealth and evasion by Black Widow herself." She felt a little guilty about talking up her criminal past to impress her son, but it was working, so it was worth it.

"What was that like?" he asked.

She picked up a slice of the veggie pizza. "Your story first."

They shared stories until the pizza was gone. Then came the part she was dreading.

Vision opened a laptop.

"What we are about to watch is classified. I am not supposed to have a copy of it. This broadcast was discovered when the secret defense organization SWORD investigated the town of Westview, New Jersey, from which, for reasons no one knew at the time, no one could leave, and anyone who had a connection to it forgot it existed. The broadcast was discovered by an astrophysicist SWORD hired to consult on what would become known as the Maximoff Anomaly, a.k.a. the Hex. At first, they didn't know who was responsible for it, or for what end it was created. We have the advantage of knowing those answers, but it is still rather disorienting to watch. Are you ready?" He glanced at Wanda when he asked that.

She nodded. She was nervous, but she would face her past if it would help Billy and Tommy see where they came from.

Vision started the Broadcast. It was a black-and-white sitcom staring herself and another Vision, a Vision of her own creation, who was now dead. It was weird. She remembered it all so vividly, but it was so different watching it than living it. She hadn't understood what was happening at first. She must have cast a spell on herself to forget her past. That spell hadn't held for long.

There were things the Broadcast didn't show. Mr. Hart's breakdown at dinner was edited down to him choking on a bite and Vision heroically saving him. She cringed at the way she acted, and the way she'd ignored signs that things weren't as good as they appeared.

If it hadn't been for the comforting touch of the Vision sitting beside her, it would have been too difficult to watch.

As the credits rolled at the end of the first episode, Tommy asked, "So you literally turned your life into a TV show?

"I didn't mean to," Wanda said. "I've always loved sitcoms. I would watch them to distract myself from how horrible my own life could be. So I guess, after I lost Vision, and was told I couldn't even bury him, I just... It was just too much. So I made my life what I wanted it to be like. But I didn't know I was doing it. I had no idea I could do anything like that. I didn't even remember doing it, or that Vision had died, at first. I just remembered that in the past I'd felt completely alone, and in the present I didn't."

"Did anyone go with you when you went to SWORD or to Westview?" Billy asked.

She frowned. "Anyone like who?"

"Did any of your friends go with you?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Did they know where you were going?"

Clint and Rhodey had. She'd been staying with Clint for a few days before she left, and it was Rhodey who told her where Vision's body had been taken. But neither of them knew about Westview.

"Kind of. Why do you ask?"

"Because someone should've gone with you for emotional support."

"They had their own things to deal with."

"But not like you did. After the Blip, my mom and I were so happy when my dad came back. We never thought we'd see him again. It was an adjustment, and there was a lot to deal with, but we were smiling for days. Almost everyone got someone back, and then we heard on the news the Avengers killed the guy who caused the Blip. But you didn't get anyone back, you just lost people. And no one was there for you. I'm sorry to tell you this, but your friends let you down. This," he gestured to the Broadcast, paused on the credits screen, "was not your fault. Everyone has a breaking point, and no one even tried to keep you from being pushed to yours."

He was so angry and sad on her behalf. She was touched. "Thank you. But...I really don't think anyone is to blame for what happened but me."

"Jimmy blames Hayward, and Darcy blames Thanos," Vision pointed out. "They both have valid arguments."

"Yeah," Billy said, "but they were bad people, and they had their own agendas. Your friends are the ones who should have done better."

They continued watching. Tommy and Billy occasionally asked questions and made comments.

"You both have super powers; why were you so scared of a branch outside your window?" Tommy asked.

"Because it was funny," was the only explanation Wanda could provide.

"Those commercials give me the creeps," Billy said.

"Yes. No one who's seen this has been able to hazard a plausible explanation for them," Vision added. He looked at Wanda questioningly.

"Sitcoms have commercials," she explained, "so my sitcom needed them too. They had details from my past. They were...a repackaging of my nightmares into something trying to be cheerful."

The episode included Wanda finding an incongruously red toy helicopter, but not the voice calling her name over the radio, or the man in the bee suit.

"This is about the point I started to suspect I was in control of that reality," Wanda said as the credits played after she and Vision realized she was suddenly visibly pregnant. "When I realized things were happening just from me wanting them to happen."

During the next episode, Tommy and Billy both laughed out loud as Wanda and Vision argued over a name for the baby. Hearing them laugh together warmed Wanda's heart.

After the twins were born, Wanda saw the shift in herself when she told Geraldine about Pietro and sang a Sokovian lullaby to her newborns. Then Monica brought up Pietro being killed by Ultron. That had triggered Wanda's memories that she'd enchanted herself to forget—Ultron, Thanos, Vision's death...

The broadcast hadn't recorded her throwing Monica through the wall and out of her world, or the moment she'd had a flashback to Vision's corpse. It skipped right to her and Vision holding their babies and watching television as the credits rolled.

"Whoa, what happened there?" Tommy asked.

When Wanda was reluctant to answer, Vision did instead. "Wanda expelled Monica Rambeau, the SWORD agent who entered the Hex and was cast as Geraldine. Monica survived moving through the energy barrier and was able to tell those outside that Wanda was behind it."

When the next episode started, Tommy commented, "These theme songs are so weird."

Wanda's heart ached to watch this one, as it made her think of how much of Billy and Tommy's childhoods she'd missed.

"Why didn't Agnes notice the babies suddenly get older?" Tommy asked.

"She did," Wanda stated.

She picked up a pang of regret and longing from Tommy at the part where the young twins were washing a stray dog in the sink. Either he'd wanted a dog as a child and never had one, or he had one that he lost, she surmised.

"That is exactly what I looked like at ten," Billy commented in amazement when the twins aged up to meet their parents' requirements for having a pet.

The show included Vision at his office setting up email on the computers and discovering a cryptic message refering to the "Maximoff Anomaly," and Vision consequently freeing one of his coworkers from Wanda's spell and learning what she was doing to them. So that's how he'd found out. It chilled her blood to see it.

It skipped from a scene where Wanda told the twins about her brother who was far away, and then going outside to investigate a noise, to the twins searching for their dog. It was obvious something was missing.

Vision paused the recording. "That was Hayward's armed drone, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Darcy and Jimmy told me what happened. Perhaps you don't know: Hayward's scientists altered that drone to absorb whatever power you used on it. That is the power they then used to resuscitate me."

"I wouldn't help Hayward with his experiment willingly, so he had a drone fire bullets at me and my children to force me to help him." She had conflicted feelings about this revelation. On one hand, she hated Hayward for his callousness, but on the other hand, he'd brought Vision back to life. He was the reason Vision was sitting beside her now. If she'd agreed to help try to bring Vision back in the first place, it would have worked. She would have gotten him back a lot sooner, and without causing the nightmare in Westview.

But then, she might never have met Agatha, never have found out she was the Scarlet Witch, and she would have still been cursed to destroy the world.

And what Hayward did, and had asked and then forced her to participate in, was in direct violation of Vision's explicit wishes that his body not be experimented on in the case of his death.

She closed her eyes. When a terrible choice led to a good outcome, did that mean it was meant to happen? Were unforeseeable good consequences of terrible crimes a mitigating factor? It was too complicated to figure out.

She felt Vision's hand on her wrist. "We can stop if this is too difficult."

"No," she said. "I need to see this. I need to face what I did."

"So a drone shot at us, and you stopped the bullets with your power?" Tommy asked for clarification.

"Yes."

He smirked. "I had a dramatic life even before I was born."

Vision pressed play.

It was painful to see herself fighting with Vision. He had been entirely in the right, and she had been dismissive toward him.

The Vision beside her took her hand. "He never would have said those things if he'd known the truth," he whispered, trying to comfor her.

"He didn't know the truth because I was keeping it from him."

And then there had been the knock on the door.

"Wait a minute...that's not Pietro," Tommy stated.

"It's a version of him from an alternate reality. I'll tell you that story later," Wanda said.

And then it was the Halloween episode.

Vision leaned closer to her and whispered, "This is the part where I can't understand or condone my counterpart's actions. He should have been with you and your children on their first Halloween. Investigating the neighborhood was important, but not so urgent that he needed to abandon his family to pursue it." He sounded upset and grieved by that choice, as if he had been deprived of the chance to trick-or-treat with his children.

That had been the last time she'd seen her husband before he tried to leave Westview, leaving her and their children and risking his life without a goodbye or explanation. She'd driven him to that.

She bit her lip, but couldn't stop a tear from escaping.

Billy and Tommy watched their younger selves discovering their powers. And then, at the Halloween festival in town square, the young Billy told Wanda Vision was dying. The screen went red, then turned to static.

After a few seconds, Tommy asked, "That's it?"

"That is all the SWORD observers recorded," Vision answered.

Wanda was grateful for that. The next episode would not have shown her at her best.

"What happened?" Tommy asked.

Vision answered. "The Vision Wanda created in the Hex could not exist out of it. When he tried to leave, Wanda expanded the Hex to save him, enveloping several SWORD agents as well. By that point, I had woken up in a SWORD lab with no memory of my past. I was sent into the Hex with orders to kill Wanda and Vision. When I arrived, Wanda was in battle with the witch Agatha, who had been acting the part of Agnes. The barriers of the Hex briefly fell, allowing SWORD operatives to enter and attack. I fought my double, but he was able to restore my memories, and I left."

Billy looked at Wanda. "What happened inside, after you expanded the Hex?"

There was a part of her that didn't want to tell the story, didn't want to lay bare her weakness, her failures, her mistakes. But they deserved to know.

"Expanding the Hex took a lot out of me. And...knowing that Vision had tried to leave...I know he'd only left trying to find help to figure out what was going on and save Westview, but it felt like he'd left me. Someone I'd lost, I'd watched die, and then...it felt like my life was cursed to lose him again and again, in every way possible. But I still had my sons and myself to take care of, so I was trying to stay positive, keeping up the sitcom vibe, tried to treat my husband leaving me as just another plot device. I don't think I did a very good job at it. When my next door neighbor Agnes offered to babysit my sons so I could have some time to myself, I jumped at it." She felt herself begin to unravel, and stood abruptly. "Excuse me."

She locked herself in the bathroom and tried to fight back tears.

Tommy and Billy were alive, she reminded herself again and again. She had not betrayed or failed them as a mother. She'd given them up to save them.

She washed her face with cold water and opened the door, prepared to answer any other questions they might have with the complete truth.

Vision was waiting for her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." She stepped into his arms and let herself enjoy the fortifying comfort of his embrace for a moment before pulling away from him and turning to their sons. "Is there anything else you want to know?"

"I think we're pretty much filled in," Tommy said.

Billy nodded, but seemed contemplative. He might have questions about her magic use that she'd be better able to explain one-on-one later.

The boys exchanged social network handles and agreed to friend each other, then Wanda and Vision took Billy home, and then went to her room in the Sanctum to talk.

"I believe it was an act of extraordinary courage for you to watch that," Vision said.

She shrugged. "I needed to see it."

"I can't imagine that he ever meant to leave you," he said somberly.

She nodded. "Darcy told me that after he met her and she explained what was going on, he tried to get back to me, but they kept being stopped by red lights and road construction and things, and he realized I was trying to keep him away. I didn't mean to do that, but I know why I did. I was terrified to face him after he learned the truth, after he found out the full scale of what I was doing. I didn't know if I could bear it if he hated me. Or even if he didn't hate me, I couldn't face his anger again."

"I'm sorry. That must have been terrible."

"After losing you, sometimes I felt like the smallest thing might break me, and I don't know what I would do if that happened. I hate not knowing what I'm capable of."

He tenderly tilted her chin up so she was looking in his eyes when he said, "I know. But I promise, as long as I'm alive, you will never have to face it alone."

She almost objected, almost pointed out that they couldn't know what the future held and what they might be driven to, and that she would never hold him to that promise. She almost told him that she didn't want to have to rely on anyone, but realized that wouldn't be exactly true: it wasn't that she didn't want to rely on other people, but that she was afraid to, because if she did and they weren't there when she needed them, she would be lost.

But she could rely on Vision. She would not lose faith in that.

So instead she decided to just accept his word. "Thank you." She took his hand and pressed her lips to the back of his fingers.

"You are welcome." He brushed an imaginary stray hair out of her face, then his lips against hers.

She kissed him back with more fervor.

There was more she wanted to say, and she felt there was more he wanted to say, but it could wait.