My name is Wanda Maximoff. My parents are Oleg and Iryna Maximoff. I am nine years old, the same age as my twin brother Pietro.
All true statements from a certain point of view but not the whole truth.
My name is Wanda Maximoff, but it wasn't always so. I was born with memories of a life in which Wanda Maximoff was nothing more than a fictional character. A tragic and a progressively overpowered character but fictional nonetheless.
Now, looking at my twin brother giggling at my attempts to recreate Wanda's magic using her iconic hand wavy motions in our backyard, I couldn't help but pray that everything I knew about her life was just a figment of my overactive imagination.
Unfortunately, I knew I wasn't that lucky. It would be less than a year later when our parents would be killed by a bomb bearing the name of Stark industries, which led to the original twins to hate the Avengers and Tony Stark.
I wasn't going to let that happen. I knew that Wanda Maximoff was born with the ability of Chaos Magic which made her the legendary Scarlet Witch. Wanda had to go through many upheavals in her life before she unlocked the full potential of her powers. I don't intend to wait that long.
Feeling pretty stupid waving my arms at nothing, I willed the stone in front of me to levitate. That was a pretty basic step to start learning magic, wasn't it? Apparently, it probably needed more determina and concentration than I had, because the stone refused to move.
"What are you even doing? Aside from looking silly that is." My brother commented, having grown tired of laughing at my performance.
"I'm trying to move that stone with magic." I answered honestly. We were nine years old. It wouldn't be strange for me to play make believe games.
"Magic isn't real though." Pietro replied. "Mrs Scalev said so."
"Mrs Scalev doesn't know everything though, does she? She only teaches maths, not science or languages. If she knew everything she could teach us all the subjects." I argued back. Magic was very real in the MCU. But it was 1999, so Mrs Scalev could be given a pass for her beliefs.
"Well, you look very stupid trying to do magic." Pietro retorted with all the maturity of a nine year old boy. "You should try to make it look cool."
"Oh, how so?"
"Well... You'll have to be more confident. You look like you don't know what you're doing."
That was true, I guess.
I stepped forward and tried to glare the rock into levitating. 'I was the Scarlet Witch. I had the power of Chaos Magic. The lowly rock should crumble before my might.' I thought as my face morphed into what Pietro would describe later as a constipated expression.
Needless to say, i didn't achieve much that day.
I know what you might thinking. I had gained my memories of my previous life as an infant. Why didn't I work on my magic sooner?
The simple answer is that I tried to. It didn't work.
The more complex answer would be that even with my memories I had the brain and body of a child. Do any of you remember being a five year old? They have the attention span of a squirrel. So, even when I tried to meditate and concentrate, trying to channel my Chaos Magic, it didn't work for too long as i would get distracted after five minutes.
Having a twin didn't help. Pietro never left me alone. Being a literal reincarnate I was understandably faster in my development than him. That didn't stop him, though. By the time we were two year old, he had understood that I was the advanced one somehow and he had to copy my every move to become as 'awesome' as I was. His words not mine.
I wonder if the original Wanda had her twins hero worship.
So, anyways now we were nine year old and almost at the brink of disaster and I had nothing to show for all my efforts. I didn't know any way to save my parents from dieing from the bomb attack. Furthermore, in canon, Wanda and Pietro lived only due to pure luck. There was no plot armour that was going to save me and my twin.
Walking back to our house with Pietro, i hadn't realised that I had made the most basic error a self insert character or time traveller could make.
I had forgotten about the butterfly.
We had just put our steps inside the house when our father rushed over and pulled us both into a hug.
"Ah, there you are. Daddy has some exciting news for both his angels." He told us, excitedly.
"What is it, Dad?" Pietro asked, jumping up and down, caught up in our father's enthusiasm.
"We're moving to America! Mommy's has been offered a transfer from her company, to the New York office!" Oleg Maximoff dropped the bomb.
"What!" I exclaimed, caught off guard.
"What's wrong, princess? I thought you'd be happy about it, considering all those sitcoms you love to watch."
I was too shocked to reply.
I had forgotten about the butterfly.
The original Wanda hadn't been considered mature enough to look after herself and her brother while their parents worked. Her mother would have stayed at home to take care of the kids instead of going back to work after she was five. She definitely wouldn't have been offered a transfer to New York.
I should be happy. My family would be out of Sokovia and it's civil war and in the relative safety of USA. There wouldn't be any bombing that would lead to the death of both our parents and I and my brother left to wait for a bomb to explode for two days.
I couldn't help but wonder though. If this had changed what's stopping anything else. How could I be sure about anything I knew? My reincarnation had already thrown a wrench in the storyline of this world. I couldn't be sure about anything to come.
