Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognise (and I'm borrowing a couple of things you may not recognise from sources you simply may not be familiar with); be assured I'll identify anything relevant when it comes up.

Feedback: Always appreciated

Scarlet Witch and the Three Spiders

"How do you know that name?" the young man with the familiar face said, looking at Wanda with a sense of apprehension that Wanda couldn't identify the nature of. "Who the- Ms Maximoff?"

"…Yes," Wanda nodded, cautiously nodding at the spider-themed hero, grateful that her memory was correct. The suit he was wearing seemed to be simple cloth rather than the advanced armour he'd been wearing in the battle against Thanos, but that could be put down to him needing something simple now that Mr Stark wasn't around to help him any more.

"OK…" the young man said, stepping back and glancing around himself for a moment before he focused his attention back to her. "So… I guess if anyone's going to throw off Doctor Strange's spell you'd be a pretty obvious candidate…"

"Strange?" Wanda repeated, immediately wondering what the sorcerer had to do with this. "What are you talking about? What spell?"

"Uh…" the young man said, now looking more tentative as though he was facing a situation he'd never been planning and didn't know how to deal with it, "you remember my name, but you… do you know about Mysterio?"

"Who?" Wanda wasn't sure if she should feel assured that her former-enemy-turned-temporary-teammate appeared to be as confused about this situation as she was.

"…Uh… OK…" Peter said, looking at her with a clearly growing sense of uncertainty. "Sorry if this sounds a bit 'all about me', but… what did you do after Mr Stark's funeral?"

The question would have left her feeling uncomfortable even before she realised what she had become under the influence of the Darkhold, but Peter's honest uncertainty at least assured Wanda that he wasn't asking because he already knew the answer.

"I… spent a few weeks in a small town, and then I…" Wanda hesitated for a moment before she decided to at least give a reasonably honest answer. "Well, I've been living somewhat out of the way for the last few months."

"How out of the way are we talking here?"

"A cabin some distance away from any city or town," Wanda explained with a brief shrug, relieved that she could at least be honest about that part of her life so long as she didn't explain what she was doing there in depth. "I was… trying to learn more about my powers, so I had a small farm for food, and then I wasn't really paying attention to… anything else."

"So you didn't hear about Mysterio?"

"No… Who was that?"

"Some old employee of Mr Stark's who set himself up as a fake superhero using hologram projectors and various drones," Spider-Man explained, a bitter edge to his own words as he paced around the roof. "He convinced everyone that he was from some other universe trying to stop the entities that had destroyed his own world from attacking ours, but I found out he'd been lying to everyone to basically take Mr Stark's place. I managed to stop him, but after he died in the crossfire of his own drones while he was trying to kill me…"

"What?"

"Well, someone posted fake footage to claim that I'd killed Mysterio because I was jealous of him becoming such a big shot, and then the same video revealed my identity to the rest of the world."

"Oh," Wanda said, suddenly reminded of the negative publicity she and the rest of the Avengers had faced after that final confrontation with Rumlow's team ended in the destruction of the Wakandan outreach program. She appreciated that the context was likely different, but the notion of all that public condemnation focused on one young boy rather than a whole team…

"So… someone told the world who you were and claimed that you were the villain?" she looked sympathetically at him.

"Yeah…" Peter nodded, walking over to lean against a nearby vent as he looked at Wanda. "Long story short, I asked Doctor Strange if he could help me get my life back, one thing led to another, and the other thing led to this… have you heard of the Multiverse?"

Wanda's blood ran cold at that simple question.

If even Spider-Man knew about the multiverse…?

"Vihz… had his theories," she said at last, deciding to stick to that level of honesty at least.

"So you get the whole 'other realities where things are the same but different' bit?"

"Of course," Wanda nodded, wondering what the multiverse could have to do with Strange helping Spider-Man with anything. "What does that have to do with this?"

"Basically, a glitch in a spell that was meant to make the world forget Spider-Man was Peter Parker led to a bunch of people being pulled in from other universes who also knew that Spider-Man was Peter Parker, even if I wasn't the Spider-Man they were familiar with," the other hero explained. "I ended up facing about five different villains from two different worlds who'd been dragged through to this one… but I also had some help from the other mes from those worlds."

"You… worked with yourself?" Wanda looked at Peter in surprise, suddenly struck by a sense that she had lost a contest she hadn't even known was taking place.

I tried to use the other mes like I was the only one who mattered, but he… he worked with them…

"Just two other mes, but yeah, that was enough," Peter smiled. "I'd already been working on trying to cure the villains-"

"Cure?"

"Well, there was this scientist who was basically being controlled by his extra robot arms, a guy whose whole body was sand, a genetics expert who'd mutated himself into a giant lizard by accident, a guy who could generate electricity after he fell into a pool of mutated electric eels, and…" Peter's voice trailed off for a moment before he finished. "It sounds almost stupid, but the fifth guy basically had an evil side that was controlling him even if his real side tried to help me."

"The evil side killed someone important to you."

"How do-?"

"You are talking to the woman who had to kill the man she loved to try and save the world," Wanda observed, trying to give the young man a slight smile. "I know what it looks like when someone is blaming themselves for the consequences of their mistake."

She may not have looked herself in a mirror yet, but when she had been face-to-face with that other version of herself… the part of her mind that was still linked to her counterpart had seen her face as she realised what she had become in the name of a goal she now realised was impossible…

"…Yeah," Peter nodded, his expression affirming her suspicions. "Still, none of them had asked to become that, and it wasn't like we were talking about the likes of Thanos or Mr Toomes who just chose to do all that crap on their own accord; most of these guys were pretty much out of their heads because of their powers. The three mes managed to cure all the villains, but then… well, the original spell got even more out of control, and the only way to stop some kind of reality disaster was to cast it again… so that nobody remembered me."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody remembers Peter Parker," Peter clarified. "Everyone still remembers that Spider-Man exists, but everyone I went to school with… everyone I grew up with… as far as they'd remember, I wasn't there."

He looked solemnly at Wanda once again. "I mean, maybe you remember me because you've got your own magic or something like that, but as far as I can tell, the rest of the Avengers… if they remember me, they just remember Spider-Man and that's it."

"Oh," Wanda said, lost for anything better to say as she looked at the young man.

She had her own experience of losing her old life after Stark's missile had killed her parents, but at least she had still had an existence to go back to. If she understood what Peter was saying… he had essentially erased himself from his old life to save everyone…

It took her a moment to realise that she was feeling grief in that moment, but once the understanding hit her, she was ashamed that it had taken so long. She had fought alongside the Avengers to protect those who couldn't protect themselves, trying to follow the example set by Pietro after he gave his life to save Clint and that child… but she'd refused to listen when Strange had tried to remind her what she was meant to stand for as a former Avenger during that confrontation at her old farm.

It wasn't as though she felt happy to feel bad about what had happened to someone else, but at the same time… it felt good to realise that she'd changed from what she'd been under the Darkhold's influence. She wasn't sure if the Darkhold had protected her from this spell or if what she'd just been through had broken it- she didn't recall her memory being changed, but it wasn't like Spider-Man's identity had played a big role in her past- but it was… good… to realise that she cared again.

"I… I am sorry," she said at last. "I… wish we could have done more…"

"We?"

"Me… and the other Avengers," Wanda said, once again feeling a sense of pride and shame at what she'd accomplished with the rest of the team and how far she'd fallen since then. "I know that ignorance is no excuse, but… if I had been there…"

"It wouldn't have helped," Peter shrugged. "With Mr Stark dead… I mean, it's not like any of you hated me, but I'd only really spent a lot of time with him and Doctor Strange one-on-one; I didn't really have time to chat with anyone else before that mess in Germany, then I was on my own here in the city, and since the Snap we've all been trying to deal with our own things… I couldn't ask any of you to put your own reps on the line for someone you don't really know."

"We should have done more-"

"Maybe, but I get why you didn't; you all had so much stuff on in your own lives there wasn't much you could do for me apart from speak up in my defence, and that wouldn't help that much," Peter said, surprisingly nonchalant about the lack of help from what should have been his team. "Seriously, we've all had to deal with some really complicated stuff post-Snap; did you see all that stuff about the new guy they tried to set up as Captain America's replacement?"

"Replacement?" Wanda raised her eyebrows in surprise. "I heard that Steve was gone, but they really replaced him?"

"Tried to," Peter clarified with a kind of grim smile. "He… well, I skimmed over the what of it because I had a lot of my own crap going on at the time, but the new guy did something stupid while tracking this new terrorist group, and the shield got passed on to the Falcon instead."

"Sam?" Wanda smiled at this news, before she shook her head and looked more urgently at Peter. "But that is good, right? We are coming back together; we can go to the others-"

"No."

"No?" Wanda looked at Peter in surprise, the young man she remembered as so lively and friendly suddenly tense and hostile.

"I already screwed up the lives of my friends and lost my family because I was trying to be something I'm not," the young man said, pulling his mask back over his head as he turned to walk back towards the edge of the roof. "I'm the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, and that's it; who I am without the mask is just what I need to pay my bills."

"You're not going to-?"

"It's not their fault, but wanting to be an Avenger screwed up my life," the wall-crawler said, pausing on the edge of the roof as he looked back at Wanda. "I have to stick to the ground-level stuff; that's all I'm good for."

Wanda might have spent the last few months telling herself that she was the only thing that mattered, but it wasn't hard to read the edge of self-loathing in Peter's voice. She wanted to try and talk to him about that particular attitude, but before she could start finding the words the young man had leapt off the roof and begun to swing through the air once again, leaving Wanda only able to look after him in silence.

She briefly thought about flying after him, but considering that she had just attacked Kamar-Taj and decimated the order, even if she didn't feel so exhausted right now it probably wouldn't be the best idea to expose her presence this close to a Sanctum. After she found a fire escape, she managed to climb down towards the street, trying to ignore the apprehension as she approached the ground.

The general public couldn't know what she had done, and it had been months since she had been anywhere but her cabin on this Earth in any case. If she could talk to someone else, she might be able to get a better sense of what had been going on in the world while she was away to help her plan her next move. If she avoided Doctor Strange for a while, maybe she could make contact with Sam or Clint again and then…

While a part of her didn't like to think of herself as 'crazy', she had to acknowledge that she needed to talk to someone about what had been happening in her life since Stark's funeral. She had appreciated being left alone to try and retrieve Vision's body from S.W.O.R.D. as she genuinely wanted to lay him to rest herself, but now that the Darkhold wasn't making her stay away, she realised how much she wanted to talk to someone. Once she reached the street, she looked around for a moment before she decided to try and talk to a man walking along in more casual clothing that still seemed smart; hopefully he'd be willing to lend her his phone so she could try and find someone's number.

"Excuse me-?" she began, only for the man to walk past her as though he hadn't heard her. Suddenly feeling frustrated at being ignored again, Wanda reached out to grab his sleeve, pulling the man back towards her.

"Sorry," she said bluntly as she released her grip on the man's arm, "but I have to…"

She trailed off as she realised that the man was looking at the area where she had just grabbed his arm as though wondering what had happened to it. On impulse, Wanda placed her hand on his other arm, and the man jumped back to look at the area she'd just touched as though trying to see if there was something on it.

"Uh… Hello?" Wanda said, mind consumed by a growing suspicion that she simultaneously wanted to deny as impossible. When the man shook his head and started walking again, Wanda wanted to take it as a good sign that he didn't try to walk through her, but he still showed no sign that he was aware of her presence.

Oh no…

"Hello?" Wanda called out, looking around the street as she raised her voice, turning in a circle to make sure she didn't miss anything. "Can… can anyone hear me?"

She liked to think that nobody would be this apathetic about a former Avenger making a relative fool of herself in public like she was now… which meant that, as impossible as it seemed, her initial thought was right.

Somehow, she had become completely invisible and inaudible to almost everyone around her… and the only person who could see her so far had just said that he wanted to be on his own.

Wanda had no idea that, several blocks away, as Spider-Man swung down to investigate an apparent drunk staggering into an alley, a meeting was about to take place that would give her a second chance to renew a previously brief friendship.