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: With the precedent established in the last chapter, I will confirm that Wanda's appearance has changed in Peter-3's world as well; here she looks like Nina Dobrev of the present day.

Scarlet Witch and the Three Spiders

After that strange encounter with the drone, Wanda could understand Peter wanting to wait until they were somewhere private to explain things in more depth. It didn't take long when travelling via flight and webbing to reach the building where Peter was currently staying, even if Wanda had noticed that she needed to concentrate more to fly than she had needed even before Westview. Once they reached the building Peter had identified as his residence, Wanda had cast a quick spell to put her in more conventional clothing, but was once again struck by the notion that it took a bit more effort to do this then she was used to in the past. She was starting to form some tentative ideas about what was going on here, but she didn't want to commit herself to a particular idea before she knew more.

One of the first things Wanda saw when she walked into the apartment of the 'local' Spider-Man was a mirror on the wall, but it took her a moment to properly realise what she was looking at. At first glance she assumed that it was a picture of someone important to this doppelganger of her former teammate, but when she saw the 'picture' move, she stepped back and stared as she realised that she was actually looking into a mirror.

"What in the world…?" she said, raising a hand to examine what was apparently her reflection in this world. Her face seemed to be slightly thinner and she had a more noticeable tan than she was used to, as well as darker eyes and hair (and the hair was in a shorter cut than she was used to; even in the sitcom world her hair had been curled rather than short). The tan could be explained if her other self had spent more time outdoors, considering that she had spent months inside studying the Darkhold, but she was sure she'd had more 'up top' than she did now, and she even seemed thinner without being unhealthy…

"Is there a problem?" Peter asked.

"…Possibly," Wanda said at last, turning back to look at him as she indicated the mirror. "This isn't me."

"Huh?"

"You say that you met… the you of my world and he looked different from you?" Wanda explained, waiting for Peter to nod before she continued. "This is not my face back in my world, but I am wondering… have I dreamwalked into my counterpart?"

"Dreamwalked?"

"A complex spell based on the idea that dreams are the result of us witnessing the activities of our other selves," Wanda explained. "I used a variant of it before with the aid of the Darkhold… and now that I see myself…"

"You think you've done it again?" Peter looked curiously at her. "You get that I caught you mid-air, right? If you did possess… the other you… and that's even if she's out there…"

He trailed off as he looked thoughtfully at her for a moment, before coming to a decision and taking a digital camera out of his pocket. "Just a moment…"

"What?" Wanda asked, only for Peter to take a photograph of her. "Hey!"

"Sorry, but if you're worried it's best we sort this out fast," Peter said, before he opened a drawer and took out a laptop, subsequently walking off into another room that looked like a kitchen. "I have an idea, but I need a picture of you to do it properly."

"Right…" Wanda said, hesitant for a moment before reminding herself that she had no reason to distrust any version of Spider-Man.

"Thanks," Peter nodded at her as the laptop finished loading and he began to tap a few keys while connecting the camera to the computer. "Just give me a moment…"

As her new ally set to work, Wanda went into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face, checking herself in the mirror to confirm that she was at least clean. She didn't know what had happened to put her in this body, but at least she could be sure that she was in good shape for whenever she returned it to its true owner (or whatever had just happened to her).

Looking at this new body once again, Wanda pondered the oddities of this transformation. Her changed clothing could return to her 'Scarlet Witch' attire with relatively minimal effort, so she was inclined to think she wasn't dealing with a 'simple' possession unless her other self had very strange taste in clothing, but given everything she'd accomplished with the Darkhold up until she destroyed it…

"Found it!"

Wanda only realised she'd been lost in her thoughts when Peter's voice broke her period of reflection. Turning around, she walked out of the bathroom and rejoined Peter in the other room, where he was looking at the computer with a smile.

"What are-?" she began, before she looked at the screen and her eyes widened. There, on the screen in front of her, was the same woman she'd just seen in the mirror, standing on some kind of balcony with her arm around a tall man with swept-back fair hair and a smile on his face that put her in mind of a strange mix of Captain Rogers and Stark, confidence without arrogance and a sense of authority in his manner.

"Who… is that?" she looked at Peter. "And how…?"

"Her name is Wanda Williams, and that's her husband Simon," Peter explained with a shrug. "I can't give you more about her, but I used a computer program to search for other images of your new face, and according to this Wanda Williams posted this image on Facebook less than an hour ago, which is about when we met."

"About?" Wanda repeated, unsure if that was good or just a reason to avoid dealing with this situation. "So she's not-?"

"I get that we can't say anything for definite, but right now, it looks like there's enough evidence that you didn't just possess Wanda Williams when you came here," Peter affirmed. "I'll keep an eye on her on Facebook to be sure it's all in order, but for the moment… well, we've got enough problems without worrying about that."

"Of course," Wanda nodded in understanding, still studying the screen with a soft smile. "So… this is who I am in this world…"

"Do you… want to-?"

"No," Wanda shook her head, already guessing what Peter was about to suggest. "This is… if she never went through what I went through, there's no point telling her about it; if she went through any of what I've faced, where's the point in bringing it all up again?"

"What did you go through?"

"My parents were collateral damage in a war they weren't fighting in, my brother was killed because of a genocidal maniac that I unwittingly helped to create, I had to watch the man I love die twice in a failed attempt to stop another madman committing mass murder, and I've spent the last few months being manipulated by an evil book."

"…Yeah, that's complicated," Peter nodded in understanding. "I mean, she probably didn't do anything involving genocidal psychopaths, but if her parents and brother died in the past, it's probably best not to bring that up again."

"Thank you," Wanda smiled gratefully at him, before deciding to satisfy her curiosity on a minor matter. "So… why do you have a mirror in your hall?"

"Good way to help keep up the civilian identity," Peter shrugged as he closed the laptop. "It guarantees I can see my reflection when I come back; if I have any scars or dirt or something like that on my face and any unexpected guests, the mirror confirms if I look OK after my latest patrol or if I need to run to the bathroom to clean myself up."

"That makes sense," Wanda nodded, before she turned her mind back to more urgent matters. "So… who are the Six?"

"Tell you my history if you tell me yours?" Peter asked. "I mean, if you're a witch, how did you get like that, and what are you doing here?"

"That is fair," Wanda nodded, already going over her history and what she'd already brought up to work out how much she could explain without making things too difficult. "You first?"

"Fair enough," Peter nodded at her. "Well, for me, it started when my parents vanished."

"Vanished?"

"Left one night and never came back, although I did hear later that their plane crashed," Peter explained, the kind of resigned pain in his tone that Wanda recognised from her own experience of reflecting on lost parents years after the fact. "I was raised by my aunt and uncle, so I had a good life, but there's always that part of you that wonders… why did this happen to me, you know?"

"I do," Wanda nodded. It wasn't the same as losing her parents in the crossfire of a war, but she could understand losing people and wondering why it happened. She might have resented Stark for providing the Americans with the weapon that killed her parents, but at least she'd known what had prompted it.

"Anyway," Peter continued, "when I was in high school, I found an old briefcase of my dad's and a bunch of his notes, which led me to trying to infiltrate his old employer, OsCorp, to talk with some of his colleagues. I was bitten by one of the genetically engineered spiders that my father had created while I was searching, which is how I got my powers in the first place, but then… long story short, I gave one of my father's old colleagues the key to cracking a gene-altering formula he was working on and he ended up mutating himself into a giant lizard by accident."

"He turned himself into a lizard?"

"He was trying to copy a lizard's ability to regenerate lost limbs and the formula basically went too far," Peter explained. "I was able to turn him back to human form, but a while later there was another accident that resulted in a guy gaining the ability to generate electricity, and then my friend Harry… he was dying of a terminal illness, and his attempt to cure himself did some really screwed up stuff to his body…"

He paused for a moment, looking at Wanda in a thoughtful manner that she couldn't quite interpret, before he shook his head and continued. "Anyway, long story short, Harry spent some time in prison, but he was able to escape and used technology from his company to create the Six."

"Who are?"

"They started out as a bunch of criminals, ranging from thugs to discredited scientists, but with access to Harry's technology they've been working on gaining power in New York to basically turn the city into their own little fiefdom," Peter explained. "Harry was the leader, and the others were this hunter guy, a scientist with metal tentacles, a guy in a suit of armour based on a rhino, and you've basically met two of them."

"The man with wings?" Wanda asked. "That was based on a real person?"

"And the holograms are the trademark of this guy who basically creates very elaborate illusions to trick his enemies."

"I see," Wanda said, wondering if she should be grateful that none of the Avengers' Earth-based foes had tried to team up with each other since Ultron manipulated her and Pietro, or just be amazed that this version of Spider-Man had apparently overcome those people on his own. "And those are the… Sinister Six?"

"They were the Sinister Six," Peter corrected her. "Harry was the team leader when it started out, basically out to take power as some sick way of punishing me for refusing to help him treat his illness, but after the first major fight… I think he was experimenting with some kind of performance enhancement drugs, and he ended up suffering some kind of overdose."

"Your old friend killed himself?"

"By accident, but yeah," Peter nodded. "The hunter guy… I don't know if he just quit on his own or got forced out because he wasn't really doing much, but the first time I fought them after Harry's death, they'd brought in new members. The new ones are this guy who attacked me with some kind of powerful vibration blasts from his suit, and a guy dressed in some kind of scorpion-based armour."

"Scorpion?" Wanda repeated. "You mean that he had a tail?"

"It shoots energy blasts rather than just being a stinger, but it's pretty tough," Peter nodded. "They set up some elaborate attack on the city they called their 'Day of Terror' a few days ago, and I've been hunting them ever since. I've got a few contacts in the police department and we have some ideas about what the Six are up to, but the trick is finding them to confirm it…"

"I see," Wanda nodded.

"So, that's where I come from; what's your story?"

"Well," Wanda began, "for a while, I believed that I received my powers from taking part in experiments performed by Hydra."

"Hydra?"

"They were essentially a splinter faction of the Nazi party."

"Nazis?" Peter looked at her with a new sense of anxiety.

"I was unaware of their origin when I was convinced to take part in their experiments, and by the time I realised what they really were… well, I had already become this," Wanda explained, holding up her hand to generate a red glow. "My brother received superhuman speed from the same experiments, but after the last branch of Hydra was defeated by the Avengers, the two of us were tricked into joining forces with Ultron."

"Ultron?" Peter repeated. "Was that some kind of robot?"

"A very dangerous one," Wanda nodded grimly. "He told us that he intended to end the Avengers' global control and stop their expanding influence on our country, but his final agenda was to destroy all life on Earth."

"All life?" Peter stared incredulously at her. "He seriously wanted to kill everyone?"

"He was crazy," Wanda said, wishing it was as easy to dismiss Ultron's influence over her as she was making it sound. "The Avengers and I were able to stop his plan, but in the process…"

"That's when your brother died, right?"

"…Yes," Wanda nodded. "I fought alongside the other Avengers for a time, but eventually… one thing led to another, and I spent some time travelling the world with the man I love."

"And… then he died?"

"At the hands of Thanos," Wanda confirmed, once again pained at the fresh reminder of the Vision's death. "Vision was one of the bearers of the Infinity Stones that Thanos sought."

"Infinity Stones?"

"Powerful artefacts that give the user power to manipulate the world," Wanda explained. "The Mind Stone that Vision possessed was also the source of my powers, so he suggested that I could destroy the Stone to stop Thanos… but after an attempt to extract the Stone from Vision failed, not only did I have to destroy Vision with the Stone, but then Thanos used the Time Stone to undo that destruction right in front of me."

"Oh," Peter winced sympathetically. "So… you had to see him die twice?"

"And then I was one of the victims of Thanos's Snap," Wanda said grimly.

"Snap?"

"He killed half the universe."

"…Yikes," Peter looked at her in sympathetic horror. "That sounds… yikes."

"Quite," Wanda nodded. "The surviving Avengers were able to undo the Snap a few years later, but Vision was still dead, and I… I did not react well."

"In… what way?"

"I accessed forbidden magic, and it… it did not go well," Wanda affirmed, lowering her head solemnly at the memory of everything she had done under its influence. "I became… what I did… I only realised that it was wrong after I ruined everything…"

"I'm… sorry?" Peter looked apologetically at her. "I mean, whatever you went through…"

He shrugged. "Well, maybe you did some bad stuff, but at least you feel sorry about it; Harry kept blaming me for what he did to himself even when I'd told him why I didn't give him samples in the first place…"

"That doesn't make it right-"

"But it also depends on what you do next," Peter said, standing up to look at her with a cautious expression on his face. "I mean… as long as you're here… if you've already worked with Peter-1 on another team… and I'm still trying to deal with the Six…"

"You want my help?" Wanda asked, her initial surprise shifting to a cautious smile.

It wouldn't make up for what she'd done to that other team of heroes or Strange and Wong's fellow sorcerers… but if she could at least feel like she was doing something to explicitly help people (so long as she made sure that she wasn't stealing her counterpart's body again), she wouldn't mind helping another hero again…

Unknown to both heroes, in another part of the city, an old man stared in contemplation at a screen showing the figure in red who had just been witnessed flying alongside Spider-Man.

As a man who prided himself on understanding everything that his enemies might throw at him and staying one step ahead of those adversaries even as he became older and less capable of matching potential enemies physically, Spider-Man had been an engaging challenge for some time, but this woman in red represented an unusual anomaly. He had a long-standing interest in Peter Parker for his intellect even before the young man acquired his unconventional talents, but this woman in red was something outside of his experience.

Granted, a few tricks like flying and shooting some kind of energy blasts wouldn't make much difference against what he had planned for the culmination of his current efforts with the Six, but considering the extent of what he had planned, it couldn't hurt to be sure he was ready to put the plan into action as soon as possible.

It was a shame that Max Dillon had lost his powers and remained so tight-lipped about how that had happened, but the accumulated technical expertise offered by Octavius, Toomes and Beck should be enough to make up for that…