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Atonement

By Ninazadzia

I dreamed I was missing
You were so scared
But no one would listen
Cause no one else cared
After my dreaming
I woke with this fear
What am I leaving
When I'm done here?
So, if you're asking me, I want you to know…

~Leave Out All the Rest, Linkin Park

I was no stranger to grief.

My sister Donna, my parents, my apprentices at Kamar-Taj, my fellow Avengers—I've experienced enough loss to last multiple lifetimes. You reach a point where grief becomes a scientific process of sorts, something you're able to compartmentalize and numb away, until the sheer act of getting over losing someone becomes more of a chore than anything else.

So for the life of me, I would never understand why Wanda Maximoff's death affected me the way that it did.

It started when my Third Eye opened. I collapsed in agony in the middle of the street, feeling like someone had just taken an ironing rod to my forehead. Wong portaled in from Kamar-Taj just before I could get hit by a car—or worse, open a gateway to another dimension.

"Yet again, your recklessness has gotten the better of you," he muttered under his breath. Sorcerers circled around me, casting various incantations and running around the library, searching for any reference they could find about the consequences of the Darkhold. Nothing, it seemed, existed as a prescription to whatever issue I was facing.

"I did what I had to do," I managed, wincing as my forehead continued to feel like it would split in half at any moment.

Wong shook his head. "You and the Maximoff witch. Thinking that the ends justify the means. Look how well that worked out for her."

Wong and I had enough of a relationship and a shorthand that I knew he didn't mean anything by it, and certainly didn't mean to unlock a Pandora's box of grief and guilt. As I lay in a twin-sized cot in Kamar-Taj for the following week, I ruminated over those words, turning them around in my head. It was ironic, really, that I was effectively in the same situation Wanda had found herself in—corrupted by the Darkhold, facing the consequences of tapping into Chaos Magic when I had plenty of by-the-book sorcery at my disposal.

So why the hell did I get to survive, and Wanda didn't?

It was a question that haunted me for weeks to come. The image of her bracing herself to bring down Mount Wundagore was burned into my retinas, when she tearfully told me, "no one will ever be tempted by the Darkhold again." It was written all over her face, how she realized the damage she had done, and just how fucked up things had gotten.

And then another image was burned into my retinas—only this time, it was the one when I'd gone to visit her in Sokovia, when I initially recruited her for help. "You break the rules, and you're a hero. I do it and I become the enemy. That doesn't seem fair."

She was right, of course. And I hated it.

When I helped Clea stop an incursion, I asked her for a favor I knew I had no business requesting.

"You want me to what?"

"She's a young woman, she died six months ago. She tapped into the Darkhold because she wanted to find her children in the Multiverse—"

"I know all about the Scarlet Witch."

That gave me pause. "You do?"

Clea crossed her arms. "I've had my fair share of unfortunate experiences with her myself."

I thought for a moment. I had to measure my next words to Clea very carefully. "Whatever she was like, where you're from… this Wanda Maximoff is different. She deserves redemption."

Clea smirked, rolling her eyes and shaking her head in response. "You're not talking about redemption. You're talking about resurrection. Something that—" she poked my sternum, "—if memory serves me correctly, Wanda Maximoff has already been granted. You know, when your friend Bruce Banner brought her back from the dead."

I raised an eyebrow. "Along with half of all of the other living creatures who were dusted out of existence, technically, yes, you're right."

"And if memory serves me correctly—isn't it your fault that everyone was dusted in the first place?"

My stomach dropped. It was a fair question, one I'd had to deal with on my own time. But I don't think I'd ever reach a point where being reminded of it wouldn't hurt.

So I repeated the same defense I'd given to Dr. West at Christine's weddings. "It was the only play we had." And then I paused before adding, "and you know that."

Clea crossed her arms, staring me up and down for a moment. In the weeks we'd worked together, I'd never been able to get a particularly good read on her. Learning she was Dormammu's daughter certainly changed my perception—she wasn't anything like the ruthless entity I'd faced all of those years ago—as did the few nights we spent in bed together. It wasn't anything like my relationship with Christine, or anyone else, for that matter—and it certainly wasn't anything I expected would happen.

But for whatever reason, Clea appeared to have a soft spot for me.

"If I help you bring her back," she said slowly, quietly, "she's your responsibility. Understood?"

To be clear, Clea only promised to help.

"This is as far as I can take you."

I nodded, squinting under the blood-red light that flooded my surroundings. "Right." We were in the midst of a smoke-filled barren wasteland, miles under the Earth's surface. The way Clea described it, we weren't exactly in another dimension, but we were no longer in my home of universe-616.

"I think the term you Terrans have for it is 'hell,'" she said nonchalantly.

I thought back to conversations I'd had with Thor and the other Asgardians, in the years since the Blip. About his older sister, and how she'd risen up from the 'Gates of Hel' to reclaim Asgard. When Thor recounted that story to me a year and a half ago, I thought he'd had a little too much to drink—but as I stared at the iron-wrought gates and watched demons dart out from under the shadows, I kicked myself for not paying more attention to him.

"Well, it certainly fits the description," I muttered. I turned to face her. "Are you sure you don't want to come? You could give her a piece of your mind to her face."

She rolled her eyes, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Sounds tempting, but I'll pass." She tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulders. "Be careful, Stephen. Not many mortals have walked through the Gates of Hel and come back alive."

I swallowed the lump in my throat, steeling myself as I took a step forward. "I'll take my chances."

By my estimate, it took us three days to escape Hell.

To be fair, all I had to go off of was how dehydrated we both were by the time we got back to the land of the living. Time was an immovable construct down there, as Wanda would tell me, so we have no way of knowing how long we were actually down there for. It could have been mere hours—it could have been closer to a week. I was too scared to look at the newspaper when we got back to the Sanctum, for fear that I'd lost another five years of my life.

She slept for close to three days. I couldn't blame her—we'd literally fought through Hell to come back up to the surface, and if it wasn't for Wanda, neither of us would have made it out. I was nothing more than her ticket past the River of Styx, the human soul who could vouch for her to the Ferryman. Making it past the guards and the demons was completely her doing—her and her magic.

This meant I had three days to prepare myself, once we'd gotten out of Hell alive. Three days to figure out how the hell I was going to update Wanda on everything that had happened since her absence—how she'd been gone six months. How she was back to the land of the living on a temporary visa, and if she wanted to become a permanent resident, I'd quite literally made a deal with the Devil to get her out, and now she had to hold up her end to the bargain—a bargain I'd negotiated on her behalf, without consulting her ahead of time.

I wrote up a whole speech, scrapped it, re-wrote it, and then practiced talking points in front of a mirror. Everything that came out of my mouth sounded stilted and unnatural. Sure, I was used to bossing around my trainees at Kamar-Taj, but this was different. I wasn't Wanda's mentor, or her boss—and for as much as she owed me her life, I owed her mine.

There was no perfect combination of words in the English language. There was nothing I could say that would make laying ground rules for Wanda Maximoff sound anything other than forced.

I was up late on the third night, reading through my talking points. I heard her footsteps from around the corner, and had just enough time to hide my legal pad under my robe.

"Hey," she murmured. Her voice sounded gravelly—like she'd just woken up from a long nap. In this case, three days long.

"Can't sleep?" I asked. I rocked back into my chair, refilling my rocks glass so that this time, instead of holding water, it held scotch.

This didn't go unnoticed. "Alcohol would help," she mused, cocking an eyebrow in the direction of the empty rocks glasses behind me.

I smiled. Yes, Wanda, alcohol would be a big help—for you and me both. I wordlessly stood up, and turned around to fill up her glass. I paused as I hovered over the assortment of liquors in my bar cart.

I turned around. "You know it's amazing, given we've literally been to hell and back together—I don't know your drink of choice."

The corners of her mouth turned up into a smile. "In Sokovia we drank vodka, but I never cared for it much." She took a seat at the opposite end of the table. "Surprise me."

I shrugged. Lucky for me, I waited tables and bartended through my undergraduate degree, and knew a thing or two about mixing cocktails. "How do you like bourbon?" I asked.

"Sure."

With a flick of my wrist, I enchanted the zest of an orange peel, bitters and sugar cube in the bottom of the rocks glass. Like with any fine motor skill, I would have to rely on my magic to muddle my ingredients together—one of the many perks sorcery afforded me. "You'll have to forgive me, I'm a bit of practice—but I used to be able to make a decent Old Fashioned."

"Oh?"

I nodded. With one large ice cube and eight ounces of bourbon, I picked up the rocks glass, and cast a small incantation to swirl the ingredients together. "I worked as a bartender, my junior and senior year of college." I could have just as easily used telekinesis to send it down the table and set it in front of Wanda, but I walked the drink over to her. My shaky hand brushed up against hers as she grasped the glass. "It was a bit of a grind, but it was the only way I could afford to pay rent."

She raised an eyebrow, and tipped the glass in my direction. I clinked my glass against hers. "That's surprising. I would have thought you'd gotten a full scholarship."

"I did. It just didn't cover room and board, past my freshman and sophomore year."

She nodded, taking a sip from her glass. She paused for a moment before saying, "it's interesting, the assumptions you make about people."

I smiled, and sat down across from her. "Let me guess—you assumed rich parents?"

"Yes." She took another sip, and then added, "but not oil-baron, trust-fund rich. More like educated rich parents—doctor parents."

I shook my head and stifled a laugh. "I wish." I took a sip from my own drink. "Would've had more to relate to with my old man, if that were the case."

"Is that so?"

"Mhm."

She used magic of her own to swirl the sugar cube, and cleared her throat before taking another sip. "What was he like?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but caught myself before I could say anything. Here the two of us were—sitting across the table from one another, drinking bourbon and scotch at three in the morning, as if we were two colleagues out on a lunch break. As if Wanda Maximoff hadn't just saved my life, and as if I hadn't just rescued her from an eternity of damnation.

"…or we don't have to talk about it, if that's too personal," Wanda said slowly, sensing my apprehension. "I'm sorry."

I shook my head. "No, it's not that." I sighed. I thought of the legal pad that was practically burning a hole in my robe's pocket. Fuck it, I figured, pulling it out and dropping it on the table in front of me. I knocked back one last swig of scotch. No time like the present. "There's just some stuff we should talk about first."

She, too, took another sip from her drink—a longer one this time. "You're right. There is."

She waited for me to say more. Instead, I found my words getting caught in the back of my throat.

"Stephen, it's okay. I know the Ferryman let us off easy. I can only imagine you had to make certain promises to make that happen."

I narrowed my gaze on her. It occurred to me then that I didn't give Wanda Maximoff enough credit—that for a high school dropout who spent the better part of her younger years fighting for Sokovia, maybe the Scarlet Witch had been always been one of the sharpest Avengers.

"For the record," I cleared my throat, "I didn't want to negotiate on your behalf. I made that clear to them, when we got out."

"But?"

"But, as it turns out… they didn't want to let you go. They certainly don't want you practicing magic, at least not in any combative capacity."

She cocked her gaze at me, and lifted her hand up. With a flick of her wrists, the scarlet red glow of her powers emanated from her palms. "I can still do this, so I'm assuming you found a loophole."

"I did."

"Which is?"

I sat forward in my chair, staring her right in the eyes. She has to know this, I reminded myself. You owe it to her and to yourself to tell her this.

"The bargain I had to make is that if you take so much as one more innocent life, we're both sent down there. Dragged right back into Hell."

Her eyes widened. She searched my expression for a moment. "Both of us?" she repeated.

I nodded.

She let a hollow, exasperated laugh, and shook her head. She knocked back what little was left of her drink. "Why would you do that, Stephen?"

"Do what?"

"Lay your life on the line. I mean, for fuck's sake," her voice rose, "you barely know me. Why the fuck would you do that?"

"I did it for you."

"Yeah, that's what I mean, why the fuck would you do that for me?" her voice broke. I don't know exactly what I was expecting. In hindsight, anger and tears should have probably been at the top of the list—but it was different seeing it in real time. "You-you don't know me. Don't know what I'm capable of. I've dropped buildings on people by accident, I enslaved a whole fucking town without meaning to, I…" she shook her head, tears welling in her eyes.

"Hey," I started. I practically jumped out of my chair, and walked to the other side of the table, taking the seat next to her. Up close, I could see the scars the Darkhold had left on her arms—I could see the bloodshot in her eyes. "You were right. The hypocrisy, the way you were made out to be the enemy, when all you wanted was to be with your children—it's not fair. It's not fair that I get to be an Avenger while you're punished."

"I've made mistakes," she whispered, wiping away the tears from her eyes.

"Wanda, look at me."

She turned, facing me head on. It was instinct that caused me to grab her hands and hold them in mine—her dark, scarred, charcoal colored hands, into my shaky, nerve damaged, equally scarred ones. We really were two sides of the same coin.

"You deserve this. Okay? You're as deserving of redemption as anyone else."

She searched my expression. This time, a flash of confusion crossed her face.

She shook her head. "No. You don't…?" She stopped herself, her eyes glowing red. I could feel her picking through my mind, spooling apart my memories like cotton candy. Whatever she was looking for, I didn't particularly care—as far as I was concerned, I was Wanda Maximoff's responsibility, just as much as she was mine. Our lives were tethered to one another. Her picking apart my memories seemed fair enough.

"Oh," she said quietly, leaning away from me as she pulled herself out from her reverie. "You haven't had them yet."

"Had what?" I asked.

"The dreams. I… this whole time, I thought that's why you brought me back."

I could practically feel my brow furrow. "What dreams?"

She sighed, closing her eyes and conjuring up a scarlet orb in her hand. "It's better if I show you," she murmured.

And like that, we were immersed in a memory. Or, rather, one of Wanda's dreams.

We were in a setting not unlike the one I'd found Wanda in, six months prior—an apple orchard, in a secluded region of Sokovia. I suppose we could've been anywhere, but it looked about the same. I watched as another version of Wanda picked apples from the tree, setting them into a crate at her feet. And then I watched as a portal opened, across the clearing, twenty or so feet away from her, and another version of me stepped out of it.

This variant Wanda turned, her expression coy, almost playful. "You're a few hours early," she declared, setting the last of the apples down into the crate.

"Wong is in New York for the weekend," the Variant me replied. "I figured the sanctum would be safe with him, at least for a few hours."

"Let's hope he doesn't let it burn to the ground," she teased.

The variant version of me laughed. "No, let's hope not." He practically ran across the field to reach her. "If so though, this is worth it."

That was all the permission Wanda's other self needed to launch herself into my Variant's arms. To say it was an out-of-body experience, to watch another version of myself lock lips with another version of the woman standing next to me, would be an understatement. I watched as the two of them fell to the ground, bodies pressed up against one another, furiously kissing and tearing layers of clothing off of one another.

As wrong as I felt watching it unfold, I couldn't look away. It took every ounce of willpower I had to turn to the Wanda standing next to me, look her in the eyes and go, "pull me out."

And just like that, we were back in the New York Sanctum.

I heaved, gasping for air as I grabbed onto the edge of the table. My heart was pounding out of my chest, to the point that I was convinced Wanda could hear how much it was racing.

"What—what was that?" I stammered.

"I've been having those dreams for the last three nights," she said softly. "At first I couldn't tell if it was another version of us, somewhere in the Multiverse… but now I'm convinced it's something more… straightforward than that."

My head was still spinning. I turned her words over in my mind. "What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Those were the same clothes I was wearing, the day you asked me to come to Kamar-Taj. That's the same orchard."

"Yeah, you mean the fake orchard. The illusion."

She shook her head. "No. Stephen—that wasn't an illusion. That was what could have happened." This time, it was her turn to take her hands, and to hold them in mine. "If I'd just said yes, if I'd come with you to Kamar-Taj—if I hadn't been so hellbent on finding my children and killing America Chavez. Those dreams, that reality—that's a branched timeline. That's the fork in the road, and the path I chose not to take." She let out another hollow laugh. "The life we could've had, instead of the one I chose for us."

I shook my head, the realization hitting me like a ton of bricks. I wanted to release her hands from mine, but at the same time, I couldn't. Not now that I'd seen what she'd seen. Not now that I knew that somewhere out there, in the infinite multiverse, there was a version of her and I that had been together. Maybe not in any official capacity, maybe it was only in secret, maybe it was nothing more than an occasional romp in the apple orchard—but I'd gotten a taste, a vision, of what we could have had. And I couldn't help it. I wanted more.

"You thought I brought you back so we could have a shot at that alternate timeline." I meant it to come out as a question, instead of a statement.

"Yeah," she nodded. "I did."

I looked at her. I memorized the lines on her face—I memorized the depths of her iridescent blue eyes. "Is redemption a disappointing alternative?" I posed.

She shook her head. "No. If anything, it's a relief. I didn't know how I would feel… well, I just, I wouldn't want to feel like I had to do anything with you." And then she said it so quickly, I almost missed it. "If anything were to happen between us, I'd want it to be real."

I asked the question before I could lose my nerve. "Is that what this is?"

"What what is?"

"This," I motioned between her and me, and squeezed her hands in my grasp. "Something real," I clarified.

"Well," she started, shifting her weight so she sat a little closer to me, "I don't think that 'something real' and redemption are mutually exclusive."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I couldn't agree more," I managed, as I finally thought fuck it, and closed the space between us.

It was one thing to witness a variant version of myself kiss Wanda Maximoff—it was another thing entirely to experience it. It was a euphoric thing, the taste of her lips against mine, the smell of her skin as she pulled her body in close to mine, the warmth of her hands as she brought them up to cup my face. I breathed her in, soaked her in, saving the rush of electricity and fire as it coursed through my body.

Maybe if we hadn't just gone to Hell and back again together, we would have stopped to think about the consequences. Maybe one of us would have slowed things down, or initiated a conversation about how it would be smart to put on a condom—or, maybe, this was Wanda's plan all along. Maybe what I'd seen wasn't actually a dream, but a vision, a construct of a reality we could have had together. A way for her to bend me to her whim, so I could give her what she really wanted.

I didn't want to believe that last part was true, but in the weeks that followed, I would be lying if I said the possibility didn't at least cross my mind—that this was all part of some larger plan for her.

I liked to believe what she initially proposed—or, rather, what I initially propositioned. That redemption and us sleeping together didn't need to be mutually exclusively—that we could have both, at the same time, and stay on the path out of darkness.

After all—I couldn't think of a better motivator for redemption than the prospect of becoming a parent. Because as luck would have it—or fate, whatever you want to call it—that was the night that set us down that path.

That was the night we conceived Tommy and Billy.

…When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
And don't resent me
And when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory
Leave out all the rest
Leave out all the rest

Forgetting
All the hurt inside you've learned to hide so well
Pretending
Someone else can come and save me from myself
I can't be who you are…

~ Leave Out All the Rest, Linkin Park