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

AN: Return to the 'prime' MCU Earth, as Wanda fights to save her teammate from his own suit.

Scarlet Witch and the Three Spiders

Wanda didn't think she would ever enjoy being invisible to the wider world, but at least for the moment it had its advantages. She was willing to keep up the search for Peter to save him from the influence of the black suit, but it helped that she didn't have to worry about being seen by other people who might wonder what she was doing. So far people just seemed to believe that Spider-Man's more aggressive behaviour was the result of a more regular bad mood rather than suspect a more malign influence, but if Peter kept this up he was going to do something that would require the other Avengers to get more interested, which could get ugly if they didn't remember that they'd worked with him outside of the mask.

For the moment, she was focusing on the positive of how easy it was for her to get around New York without anything bothering her. She even used the opportunity to deal with a few smaller crimes while she was on her 'patrol', ranging from simple muggings to more detailed potential assaults. She wasn't going to convince herself that any of this would make up for what she had almost done to America and what she had actually done to the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj, but it made her feel better to prove to herself that she could actually help people on any scale.

She might have suffered great loss in the course of her life, but she could assure herself that she didn't want to just lash out at the rest of the world. Lashing out at the sorcerers and trying to take America's power had been wrong, but at least she'd never decided to attack random civilians just because she wanted to make other people suffer like she had. She just needed to get back to a point where she could feel like she had when she originally joined the team after Sokovia fell, wanting to protect others facing the kind of loss she'd suffered herself…

However, even in those moments, she never allowed herself to forget why she was really out here right now. She had pulled up a paper from a news stand at one point, and while the Daily Bugle broadcasts certainly exaggerated just how 'bad' Spider-Man was, even the other paper she'd glanced over didn't leave her feeling encouraged. There was still no news to suggest that Spider-Man had actually killed anyone, but the latest news suggested that he was crossing several lines he shouldn't. He'd already intercepted an attempted murder by causing serious damage to the man's hip before the would-be killer was taken into custody, and the woman he saved had been taken to hospital after the shock of it all. From what Wanda had been able to sense when she flew by the hospital where the victim was being treated, even when limiting herself to a quick 'peek' at the woman's mind the would-be victim was clearly shaken by what she had seen of Spider-Man's new brutality.

I have to find him, Wanda thought, her musings exceedingly grim as she turned over everything she'd seen during her mental probe. Peter is a good man… he can't let himself slip like that against common crooks…

When she saw a black-clad figure swinging past lit windows at the other end of the street, Wanda adjusted her flight to follow the glimpsed form. She hung back at first, taking the time to confirm that she had found her target, but even with the black suit making him hard to see in the dark it wasn't that difficult to confirm that she was now following her fellow former Avenger.

After a few moments, she saw Peter start to descend towards what looked like a mugging, and decided to take action before he could do anything he'd regret. Diving down towards the street, she managed to get ahead of Peter and force him up towards the nearest building while tossing the mugger away from their potential victim. She took a moment to confirm that the target was running away to safety and the mugger was just running off in a panic, before she ascended upwards towards the church tower where she'd thrown Peter. Just as she'd hoped, he had landed in the belltower, allowing Wanda to touch down on the floor alongside the black-clad wall-crawler.

"You…" Peter said, his voice disturbingly deep as he looked at the woman in red.

"Me," Wanda said, raising her hands defensively. "And you have to let Peter go."

"I am Spider-"

"You're not even that," Wanda countered, hoping that she was taking the right approach. "You're the alien posing as his suit to control him."

"I help him," the suit (and it was the suit talking, Wanda could tell; there was a darkness that she could tell wasn't Peter) said. "We are better this way."

"Peter," Wanda looked firmly at her sort-of teammate, "you can't listen to that suit; it's not helping you-"

"We are better this way," Peter/the suit repeated, although Wanda noted that his voice now sounded somewhat lighter than it was previously. "We are teaching the criminals on the streets that there's something to fear-"

"And how does that help anybody?" Wanda countered. "Fear does not help anyone; fear is what drove Pietro and I to join Ultron before we learned what he truly was. The team fell apart because others decided they were too afraid of the power we represented to recognise that we only wanted to help. You cannot make things better by making people fear you, Peter; we must make people believe that things can be better, which we do not achieve by hitting people."

"You dare to criticise the way we do things?" the suit (Wanda wouldn't think of it as Peter when its voice was that deep) said, the voice sounding deeper once again. "After what you have done?"

"I never said I was perfect," Wanda countered. "However, even when I was at my lowest point, I did not decide to take it out on random people."

"They were all criminals-"

"And you nearly crippled them," Wanda cut him off, determined to get Peter back rather than keep talking to the suit. "I have made mistakes, but I did not set out to do them; I listened to the wrong things and did not realise what it was doing to me until it was too late."

"You made an entire town live your fantasy life; what we do helps people-"

"Peter and I both scared people and told ourselves it was not important so long as we were 'content'," Wanda cut him off, refusing to let the suit bait her like that. "I repeat, the difference is that I did not know what I was doing until I was confronted by my mistakes; Peter must know that what he does with you is not right-"

"I am the only thing he needs!" the suit yelled, Spider-Man's full-face mask suddenly forming a toothed mouth and snarling at Wanda, swinging out a hand to strike the bell beside him. As the bell let out a loud ring, Wanda winced at the close proximity of the sound, but her attention was drawn to Peter when he staggered back, letting out a scream of agony as the suit seemed to ripple across his body. The black suit returned to normal as the sound faded, but Wanda had already seen the effect it had, quickly spinning around to strike the bell with her powers and set it ringing once again. As the sound reverberated through the tower, the suit began to pull away from Peter, forming a basic 'head' that seemed to be screaming in agony on its own as Peter grabbed at it.

"Get…" Peter began, his voice no longer possessing the deep distortion caused by the suit, "this… off… me…!"

"I will," Wanda said, reaching out to grab the 'head' of the suit that was separate from her fellow Avenger-

Standing in the blank void that she had experienced during her confrontation with Charles Xavier, Wanda wondered if she should smile or cry when she saw Peter Parker lying on the 'ground', curled up and sobbing like a scared child, while a large black figure stood over him. The figure vaguely resembled Spider-Man, with large eyes and a spider-like symbol on its chest, but it had large teeth and a long tongue, which licked its lips as it glared at her.

"Get out," the black-clad thing said grimly, as it moved to stand over Peter.

"Not without him," Wanda countered, raising her hands in anticipation. "You can stand down and make this simple, or you can fight and make this difficult."

As her fingers glowed with red energy, Wanda allowed herself a grin. "Please… feel free to make it difficult."

She wasn't sure if it was a sign of a true Avenger to want to fight, but after everything she'd done and all the people she'd hurt under the Darkhold's influence, it would be good to have a chance to fight someone who actually deserved to get beaten up.

"He needs me!" the black figure yelled. "He has nothing; I will protect him!"

"By killing people?" Wanda countered. "You will ruin his reputation-"

"I will protect him!" the creature yelled, taking a few threatening steps towards Wanda that put her in mind of her first confrontation with the Hulk before she'd finished 'programming' him to go for the city. "He lost everything because he was Spider-Man and Peter Parker; he will be a better hero now because he wants to be alone!"

"I lost my parents before I even met the other Avengers and my brother died during my first mission with them," Wanda countered, glaring up at the creature even as she hoped that Peter was also aware of this. "I was able to move on from that and form new friendships-"

"That is what I'm doing for him-!"

"You are cutting him off from human contact and making him focus exclusively on Spider-Man," Wanda interrupted once again, refusing to back down even as the creature's long tongue moved over its lips in a manner that made her think of wolves licking their lips. "Your intentions might be good, but your methods are flawed; whatever Peter has lost, he can still move on-"

"I AM ALL HE NEEDS!" the black figure yelled, lunging towards Wanda before she extended her hand and 'grabbed' the creature in a burst of red mist. Probing her way inside the entity's mind, Wanda sensed an entity more limited than her previous experience of probing minds, as though she was dealing with something that hadn't properly developed mentally. She briefly wondered if this was what it might be like to access the mind of someone suffering from some kind of learning disability, but this felt like it was something more than just a person suffering from a mental illness.

She couldn't explain how it would come across in psychological terms, but it felt as though she was dealing with a living being that had become fractured from a part of itself and was still trying to rebuild. She could only speculate about how or why this thing had decided to latch on to Peter in particular as its host so long after the initial multiversal event with his other villains, but she guessed that this thing had been left in a fragile mental state after being brought here and left behind.

If there had been a chance that this thing could be better, she would have tried to spare it and take it somewhere secure, but she could tell that there was no hope for this thing to grow beyond its warped obsession with Peter. It lacked the mind to do more than fixate on its current 'need' to 'help' Peter by driving him to ruthless acts, so Wanda had to stop it taking that interest any further.

"Peter doesn't need you," she informed the black-clad creature, which was already beginning to lose its form and essentially collapse down into a shape that she could only think of as a 'splat'. "He has other friends."

"You think… you can help him?" the creature said, even as its head began to shrink along with the rest of its body. "When you… lost it all… yourself? You will never… make up… for the past..."

"Maybe I won't," Wanda conceded with a shrug even as she focused more energy into the mist around the creature. "But I know that I won't stop trying to be a better person than I was… and I know that Peter deserves better than to be your puppet."

"He will… be alone…"

"I will be there for him," Wanda affirmed, before she clenched her fists. "And you won't be."

The black creature let out a final roar of rage that turned into a strangled scream as the red mist essentially solidified around it, before Wanda thrust her hand forward and forced it away from the trembling form of Peter Parker-

Back in the real world, the black suit reverted to a squirming goo-like formation as Wanda slammed it against the wall before shifting her position to strike it against the bell once again. The sound hurt Wanda's ears as the bell rang from the impact, but the black suit still seemed to take it harder, leaving Wanda to smile in relief as she tightened her grip on the entity and set the bell ringing. After a few moments watching, the suit ceased writhing in agony and collapsed into what Wanda could only think of as a black puddle at the bottom of her energy sphere. Once Wanda released her grip on the sphere, the thing that had been Spider-Man's suit collapsed into drips of some kind of liquid that seemed to 'evaporate' as Wanda watched, unable to detect any trace of the creature's fractured mind.

"Well," she said with a slight smile. "That could have gone worse…"

Her voice trailed off as she looked back at Peter and saw him curled against the wall, arms wrapped around his legs, only wearing boxer shorts as he trembled.

"It was…" he said, his voice so low that Wanda wasn't sure he was even talking to her. "Oh god… the blood… it was all… I broke people… what did I do…"

"You did nothing," Wanda said, walking over to crouch down in front of her former teammate, trying to focus on his face more than his current clothing issues; clearly that suit had been basically the only thing he'd been wearing after it began to take control. "It was the suit."

"But-"

"We have both done things we are not proud of because of outside influence," Wanda said, hating to have to remember everything she'd done because of the Darkhold but needing to acknowledge it. "What is important is that we are both free of such influences."

"I… what I said to you… even before the suit…"

"You had been having bad days," Wanda tried to give him a reassuring smile, ignoring the pained reminder of how Peter had rejected her when they first met. "You are human; you are allowed to feel bad and say the wrong thing."

"…I… I'm so alone…" Peter whispered, even as he released his grip on his legs to slump against the wall, tears gleaming in the corners of his eyes. "It's just… I'm so tired… and that suit… it made it all so easy… I didn't feel the pain because I just didn't care any more…"

"It is always easy to choose not to care," Wanda said, tentatively reaching over to place a comforting hand on Peter's knee. "Part of our duty as Avengers… we must be the ones who care so much for others that we are willing to die for strangers…"

For a moment she bowed her head, briefly overwhelmed at the sense of shame she felt at how the two people she loved the most had lived up to that part of their role while she had fallen so far as to threaten an innocent girl for her own sake, but that shame was soon forgotten when Peter suddenly grabbed her in his arms and pressed his head into her shoulder, his body shaking with repressed sobs as Wanda reached up to give him an awkward hug of her own.

"…Sorry I was a jerk before…" Peter said, his voice muffled as he pressed his face against her jacket.

"You had a bad day," Wanda said, already resolved not to resent Peter for that, trying not to think about how this was probably the first time anyone had hugged him since that spell. "We all have them; what matters is that you are sorry."

Each of them knew that they would have to move on from the tower soon, and the following hours would be focused on the challenges of Peter trying to get home without being seen while Wanda did her best to help him when she was still invisible to the rest of the world… but for the immediate moment, with the suite destroyed and the two youngest (human) Avengers reunited, they had nothing more to focus on than reaffirming their own fragile but developing bond.

Even if Wanda knew that she still had her own problems to deal with, right now she was focused on the simple satisfaction that she had managed to help someone else, stopping a monster and bringing a fellow Avenger back to himself. It was a small thing, but after how far she'd fallen before she realised her hunt for America was wrong, it felt like a relief to know that she could still turn back and help someone just for the sake of helping them.

Maybe she was the only one who would accept it if others learned what she had done before, but in this moment, Wanda felt like an Avenger again for the first time since she'd seen Vision's corpse at S.W.O.R.D….

More than that… when she looked at Peter, seeking comfort and support from her that she was all too willing to offer, she felt like she could be part of a team again.

I wonder if the other mes are thinking of the other Peters this way…