Wow, how did I not realise that this is my 150th fic on this site?! Chapter 5 is still not finished, but I'm hoping to have it (and likely a sixth or seventh chapter) done soon.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'X-Men' or 'WandaVision', or any of their characters.
WORD COUNT: 1,085
The next three days that pass by are hell. When the woman who trapped them (Agatha, as she finally introduces herself the following morning) is at home, she occasionally lets Ralph and his mother out for bathroom breaks, and after discovering that Ralph's mother is actually a decent cook, she also allows her to cook meals for the three of them. Agatha spends much of her time in the basement, and Raven gets the distinct impression that she's almost as annoyed by the irritating, chirpy woman Raven is stuck play-acting as much as Raven is, herself. Ralph appears to be perfectly happy to lounge around in the attic once the TV is moved up there, much to his mother's annoyance.
Raven is ready to crawl out of her skin by noon of the second day. She has long since figured out that she can't use her powers while she's stuck like this, and she has no idea how to escape this hell. This persona she has been forced to adopt (Patsy, as she introduces herself when prompted by Agatha) is apparently easily entertained by some magazines on knitting patterns, so Raven is forced to stare at these damn things (she can't even control where her eyes move!) for hours on end while Ralph, with Peter presumably trapped within him the same way she is within Patsy, stares mindlessly at the TV.
On a far more perplexing note (although still marginally less disturbing than being trapped in her own body), the room has changed overnight. The clothes she and Peter are wearing are slightly less old-fashioned, and the furniture has changed, too, although everything is still in black and white. The knitting magazines have been replaced by catalogues for sewing patterns, with many fashions being those she remembers seeing on older women back in the sixties. Ralph is now fixated on movies such as 'Dr. Who and the Daleks' and 'Mars Needs Women'.
It's on the evening of the second day that something more interesting than cooking and bathroom breaks occurs. Just as Patsy is settling into bed, a wave of red washes over the room again – the first actual colour Raven has seen aside from Agatha's powers – and even though the lights are dim, she can see that the red isn't the only colour she's seeing, now. The world has, thankfully, ceased to be simply black and white; colour has returned to her vision at last.
The third and most of the fourth day follow in a similarly dull fashion – well, dull except for the fact that the room and their clothing change again each morning. Day Three lands them in the seventies (with Ralph now watching 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' while Patsy stares at a magazine filled with household goods after preparing a picnic basket in what must have been a foolish bout of optimism), and the fourth day brings them to current day, although Patsy's clothes are still better-suited for an older woman, rather than Raven's preferred leather jacket and jeans. Ralph is dressed a bit more like Peter normally does, but his T-shirt is a plain white one, without the usual band logos that the speedster typically favours.
It's the early evening of the fourth day when Agatha decides to break pattern. She comes into the attic, and sits down in a chair that she creates out of nothing (Raven's starting to wonder if this woman really is a mutant, or if witches are actually a thing in this universe).
"So, Ralph, how would you like a little change of pace?" she asks cheerfully, completely ignoring Patsy.
Ralph barely looks up from the TV, which is now playing a movie Raven's never seen, called 'Aliens', although it appears to be the sequel to one that she's seen bits and pieces of. "Meh. I'm pretty good here."
Raven wishes she could roll her eyes. Peter, for all of his love of TV, movies, video games, et cetera, has a short enough attention span that he can only do those things in short bursts before getting distracted by something else. He has to be going crazy in there!
"Well, this'll give you an opportunity to stretch your legs a little, and have some wacky fun. I just need to make a few small adjustments…" She produces a necklace with some pale crystals strung on it out of her pocket, then gets up and walks over to stand behind Ralph and sling it around his neck before he can try and stop her.
"Hey, what the-" Ralph looks startled for a moment, but looks dazed when the necklace tightens around his neck.
Raven wants to yell and jump up and drop-kick this crazy woman away from Peter, but Patsy only stands up in concern. "Ralph, honey?"
Ralph then sits up, looking no worse for wear. "I'm fine. What do you need me to do?" The first bit was addressed to Patsy, but the rest is said while looking directly at Agatha, and Raven feels a cold chill run down your spine.
"My neighbor misses her dead brother. I was hoping you could go and help her get the perfect family she's been trying to create. She's got the husband and the kids; all she needs is her brother to complete the picture. Do you think you could do that, for me?"
The alarm bells in Raven's head, which have been ringing pretty much since everything went red and then black-and-white three days ago, ring even louder at the cryptic statement. What does Agatha's neighbour have to do with anything? What is the point of trapping the two of them here? What the hell is the thing causing their bodies to be hijacked, or their hop through different time periods?
Raven has had a lot of time to think about their predicament. She knows that someone was screaming right before the weirdness started, and that it came from the right side of Peter's temporary home. She also remembers that the lot on that side was empty when she passed by. But she thinks she also heard a car passing, so maybe the screamer arrived in that?
But while Raven tries to figure out what the hell is going on, Ralph is nodding agreeably. "Yeah, that's fine. I can be the best Uncle Ralphie the kids have ever had!"
Agatha shakes her head. "Actually, her brother's name is Pietro. I specifically need you to pretend to be Pietro Maximoff."
Okay, now we're getting into the part where he actually gets involved in canon.
I literally just looked up a list of movies with aliens in it, and selected a couple for each decade. Since Raven and Peter were taken from roughly 1984/1985 in this story, they wouldn't have seen 'Aliens', which came out in 1986. Its predecessor 'Alien', however, is from 1979.
