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: Back to Wanda Two, as we meet some of the other heroes of this world.

Also, some reference will be made to villains from the video games based on the related films. The films themselves will be explicitly canon while the video game elements will be adjusted, but I decided it couldn't hurt to give Maguire and Garfield's Spider-Men a chance to face some of their other enemies beyond those few who appeared on the big screen.

Scarlet Witch and the Three Spiders

"Who are you?"

Wanda wasn't sure if it should be a credit to Natasha's training in self-control or an insult to everything the lost Avenger had taught her about staying alert that she was so calm upon waking up to find an unfamiliar voice addressing her. Taking a moment to collect herself, Wanda took in the young girl looking curiously at her as she lay on the sofa, the red hair familiar even as she knew she'd never seen this girl before…

"May?" she said, as the name finally came to her.

"That's her," another voice said. Sitting up properly, Wanda looked around and soon spotted an older woman standing in the door of this room. The woman's vibrant red hair made Wanda think of a softer Natasha as the wife of this other Peter Parker looked thoughtfully at the displaced Avenger. "Peter tells me you're a… business acquaintance of his? You're from out of town but you got diverted here after an accident?"

"That is… essentially correct," Wanda smiled at the older woman, wondering what Peter had shared with her that she wasn't ready to discuss with her daughter present. "Mary Jane, correct?"

"That's me," the woman replied with a nod. "Did you sleep all right? From what Peter told us when we got back, it sounds like… well…"

"I am fine," Wanda nodded reassuringly at the other woman. She didn't know exactly what Peter had told his family about her, but even if Peter wasn't the type to criticise a person behind their back, Wanda doubted that she was ready to hear his thoughts on her in depth. "It was… a good night's sleep helped put things in perspective."

"You just needed a nap?" May looked at Wanda with a slightly teasing smile.

"That is a good way to look at things," Wanda nodded at the girl with a small grin.

"It's like we've always said, Mayday," Peter walked in, smiling warmly at his daughter. "Sometimes the best thing anyone can do is take a time out."

"But you never listen when Mommy tells you that," May pouted.

"Because people like your daddy and I can't always let ourselves take time out," Wanda said, even as a part of her wondered if she deserved to classify herself with Peter after what she had done. "We do what we can, but… well, sometimes all we can do is grab it when it's possible."

"Oh," the girl said, a thoughtful expression on her face that reminded Wanda of when Pietro was trying to understand something their parents had told them back before the bomb.

(Wanda would not think about the fact that she hadn't spent enough time with Tommy and Billy to see that kind of expression on their own faces; her sons were happy in their home reality with their true mother, and that was all that mattered.)

"And talking of doing what we can," Peter said, smiling over at Mary Jane, "Wanda and I need to visit a few people who might be able to help her… problem, so will you and May be OK for a while?"

"No problem," Mary Jane smiled at him in understanding. "We were going to the park for a bit to enjoy the good weather; maybe you could join us later?"

"If there's time," Peter smiled. "You know how he gets when he's caught up in something interesting."

"Who?" Wanda looked curiously at her friend.

"I'll explain when we're there."

Somehow the idea that Spider-Man even bothered to take the subway like a regular New Yorker felt strange to Wanda. She told herself that she wasn't ready to be seen openly using her abilities in this world until she had a clearer idea of what was happening to her, but at the same time she had grown used to travelling by foot when staying in particular cities. There was something refreshing about being able to go out on public transport once again, after going into hiding after escaping the Raft and then forced to retreat all over again after Westview, but she just wished she could be sure what was going to happen to her.

Trying to take her mind off that pointless speculation, she spent some time people-watching, trying to test her old lessons from Natasha and assess which of them would be more likely threats or who she would move to protect if it came to a fight. It was a morbid topic in some ways, but she wanted to assure herself that she hadn't completely abandoned her old protective instincts even after what she'd done during the assault on Kamar-Taj.

"OK," Peter said, after they had departed their train and were heading for the surface, "once we get out of here, head for the nearest alley; we can change and then head to the Baxter Building."

"The what?" Wanda looked curiously at him.

"You don't have that?"

"Not as far as I-" Wanda began, before they reached a more open area that she recognised. "Grand Central?"

"You've been here?"

"Not… directly, but it has a history for the Avengers," Wanda answered, allowing herself a brief smile at the memory of Stark's displays. "During their first mission together, the team fought off an alien invasion from a wormhole above New York, and they… basically crashed an alien ship into this building."

"Whoa," Peter said, looking around the station with a thoughtful smile, evidently trying to picture what that must have looked like, before he shrugged and indicated the main exit. When Wanda followed him out of the building, she was initially able to appreciate the relatively familiar sight of New York (she'd never been herself but she had at least seen it in news broadcasts), until she turned around and realised what wasn't there.

She had been aware on some level that Avengers Tower wouldn't be there when Peter had already made it clear that team didn't exist here, but somehow the idea that even Stark Tower wasn't in this city any more…

She shook that thought off and hurried after Peter, trusting that he had a destination in mind in this New York she was increasingly realising she knew even less about than she had previously believed. As Peter walked briskly into an alley, Wanda followed after him, but quickly turned around when she realised that he was starting to remove his clothing. Even knowing that Peter was wearing his costume under his clothes, Wanda still gave him the essential privacy as she waved her hands and transformed her clothes into the red outfit of the Scarlet Witch.

"OK, just follow me," Peter said as he pulled on his mask and jerked his thumb upwards. "We're not too far from our destination, but it's better to go in from the outside; gives Reed plausible deniability if anyone tries to make him tell them where I live."

"Reed?"

"You'll meet him when we get there," the now-masked Spider-Man said as he fired off a web-line and leapt upwards into the air. Wanda allowed him a couple of moments to get ahead before she 'pushed' herself into the air after him, smiling at the warm breeze as she left the surrounding buildings and entered the sky above. She hovered in the air at first to confirm what direction Peter was travelling in, but it was easy to register the direction he was taking and follow after him.

For a moment she enjoyed flying alongside someone else again, her mind taking her back to those more 'innocent' moments when she had practised her aerial combat manoeuvres with Sam, Rhodey and Vision, back when the Avengers had been forming a more genuine team dynamic… before everything had gone so wrong because of her mistake in the hunt for Rumlow…

"Hi there," a voice said from behind her.

Wanda was so shocked that she almost forgot to adjust her flight path, and then she lost the last of her control for a moment when she looked back and realised that the speaker was a flying man who was literally on fire as he flew through the air.

"Whoa!" Peter called out, only for the sound of his voice to remind Wanda to re-focus her powers and continue towards the indicated building. "Johnny, I told you not to startle her!"

"Hey, after everything you told Reed, I was curious," the flaming man (Johnny?) said, waving a hand at Wanda as he seemed to settle into a particular speed alongside them. "She's really from another Earth?"

"And we're looking into ways to get her back, so could you just… never mind," Spider-Man said, pulling himself upwards on another web-line. Wanda had just lifted herself up after him before he landed on the top of the building in front of them, a mixture of old brickwork and modern glass, which she noted had a strange design on the roof. Curious, she forego lowering herself down to join Peter and the man on fire and raised herself up a short distance to get a better look at the pattern, which displayed a large '4' in the middle of a circle.

The symbol rang a warning bell in her mind, but Wanda ignored that as she descended down to the ground where Peter and the flaming man were standing. She noticed that the man was now normal, wearing a blue suit of some kind, but it was only when her feet touched the ground that she realised the most remarkable thing about him.

"Steve?" she stared incredulously at the man who she only now realised was the exact double of her old team leader.

"Steve?" the man tilted his head and looked at her with a smile. "Sorry, you've got me confused with someone else; I'm Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four."

"Fantastic Four?" Wanda repeated, before she shook her head as she realised the implications of the older man's smile. "Oh God; please don't take that any further."

"Take what?" Storm asked.

"You look like a man I greatly respect and you act like a man I spent most of a decade blaming for the worst day of my life; it is too weird."

"That is a very weird combination," the formerly flaming man said after taking a moment to process her words, although he at least ended the flirtatious grin.

"Johnny really looks like someone you know back home?" Peter looked at her in surprise.

"But… you don't know me as Johnny Storm?" Steve's doppelganger looked curiously at her.

"His name was Steve Rogers," Wanda explained, raising her eyebrows when that name didn't stir any recognition. "The World War Two super-soldier?"

"You had superheroes back in World War Two in your world?" Storm grinned. "And he looked like me?"

The look-alike frowned as he considered what Wanda had just said. "And you know him well enough to recognise me as him? If this guy was active back in the forties-"

"He was frozen in ice in a plane crash and his condition preserved his body so that he could be revived a couple of years before I would meet him," Wanda explained, shaking her head as she looked Storm over. "You are not as strong, but you look very like him…"

"So… I look different to your Peter Parker, but Johnny looks exactly like someone else from your world?" Peter looked from Wanda to Storm in surprise, before he shook his head. "The multiverse is a very strange place."

"And I'm sure that we would all be curious to learn more about that once we've helped our guest find her way home," another voice said. Turning around, Wanda saw that someone had walked out of a door that had suddenly emerged from the previously flat centre of the roof, but she was struck by a new kind of shock when she saw the new arrival more directly.

Just like when she had first seen the face under the mask of the Spider-Man standing next to her, this man didn't look immediately familiar, but she could safely say that she had met his counterpart. The man she had met previously had a beard where this man was clean-shaven, but the blue costume he wore was in such a distinct style, complete with the number '4' on his chest, that he couldn't be anyone else.

The implication of the mental warning she'd felt upon first seeing this symbol fell into place, and Wanda suddenly wished she was somewhere else. Johnny Storm might just be part of his primary team, but now she was certain that she was facing a counterpart of one of the members of that other team she had killed while hunting Stephen and America.

"I understand that you're a friend of Peter's?" the new variant said, smiling politely at her as he held out his hand. "Reed Richards; some people call me Mister Fantastic."

"…Wanda," Wanda replied, shaking the offered hand, hoping that she wasn't making a mistake by not telling this man about her history with his other self straight away. "Wanda Maximoff… sometimes known as the Scarlet Witch."

"Witch?" Storm repeated. "I can't decide if that's cool or creepy."

"It is what people call me," Wanda said, hoping that would be enough as she tried to give Reed Richards a casually curious smile. "What has Peter told you about me?"

"That you were displaced from your universe to our own when you… destroyed some kind of magic book?" Reed looked at her with a slightly sceptical smile. "You are aware that science and magic don't always interact well with each other-"

"I understand that you may not be able to find much, but there is something else you should know," Wanda cut him off, hoping that Peter was right to have faith in this man. "Since last night, I have learnt… more about my current state."

Lying on her back in something that reminded her of a bizarre combination of a dentist's chair and what she'd seen of an MRI machine on some episode of Scrubs (she preferred family sitcoms, but that show had its own strange appeal), Wanda wondered if Tony Stark had ever developed something like this. The first modern Avenger had been a strange man at the best of times, and he and Wanda obviously hadn't interacted much (a near-decade of resentment wasn't an easy thing to put aside that quickly), but while she had seen enough of his science to know he was very advanced, he also tended to focus on machines. Wanda wouldn't pretend she understood what she was actually in right now, but what she could see put her more in mind of the cradle she and Pietro had helped Ultron steal and had subsequently been used to help create Vision (Wanda pushed that thought down before it could go further).

It was a bit boring being in here at the moment, but it at least gave her a chance to collect herself after meeting the rest of Reed and Johnny's team, which included the rock-like Ben Grimm, who for reasons she wasn't clear on had chosen to call himself 'the Thing', and Reed's wife/Johnny's sister Susan, who had the ability to turn herself invisible or create force fields. Wanda felt that she had managed to suppress her shock when she first met Sue and caught a glimpse of the two Richards children in another part of the building, before Grimm took them away, but it didn't stop her remembering what she had said when she faced Reed's counterpart on that other Earth.

"Good. There will be someone left to raise them."

As though anything could make up for losing a parent when a child was at that age…

"Are you all right in there?"

"Fine," Wanda replied, glancing at the open area where Susan Richards was looking in from outside. Reed was apparently studying the computer screens on the other side of his wife's current position, so Wanda couldn't see him directly, and Peter and Johnny were waiting in another part of the room while the Thing kept an eye on the children. "Just a bit dull."

"If your life is anything like ours, I can understand that," Susan said with a smile. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate peace and quiet as much as anyone, but there are times you want a week that's between 'nothing happened' and 'planet-eating monster coming for us'."

"Planet-eating monster?" Wanda repeated, surprised at that particular declaration. Thanos might have done more damage with the completed Gauntlet in one moment than anything else could have imagined, but the concept of something that apparently ate planets was still disturbing.

"True story," Johnny said from somewhere out of view. "Guy sent his herald, who was this silver guy on a surfboard-like thing, to scope out our planet, and then the military got irritated with… a couple of mistakes… and ended up recruiting an old enemy of ours to try and stop the surfer."

"The military recruited your enemy to save the world?"

"To be fair, the general in charge of the operation had a grudge against me since I rejected an old missile defence plan of his-"

"You can't justify something that stupid just because you're sorry that guy bought it," Johnny observed (Wanda couldn't stop herself thinking how bizarre it was to hear Steve's voice saying things she'd expect to hear from Stark). "None of us wanted the guy to end up dead, but he's the one who was dumb enough to trust Vic in the first place."

"Quite," Wanda put in with a grin, glad for something else to think about. "That would be like the government of my world relying on Loki to save them."

"Loki?" Sue looked at her in surprise. "Someone named themselves after a god?"

"He was the god," Wanda corrected with a smile, even if she knew none of them would see it. "And one of my teammates was Thor."

Even if she still wasn't sure if she should share her more awkward personal details with them, there was something satisfying in seeing these people looking at her with that kind of surprise.

"You had a god on your team?" Johnny said. "Seriously?"

"And he wasn't even our strongest member," Wanda continued, unable to stop herself smiling as she pictured their reaction. "The lightning attacks were good, but in terms of raw strength, the Hulk could beat him."

"Hulk?" Reed asked, even as she heard a few taps as though he was working on a keyboard.

"Doctor Bruce Banner; when provoked into a rage, he turns into a large green man-"

"Who's incredibly strong?" Susan finished.

"You have the Hulk?" Wanda was starting to wonder what it said about the multiverse if this world had Bruce and Peter but apparently didn't have her or Steve. Was it better or worse to have fewer heroes, if they ended up facing things like that planet-eating monster they'd mentioned earlier?

"You have the Hulk?" Peter said in surprise. "And he was part of the… Avengers?"

"Bruce had some… trouble… with the public, but he has made progress," Wanda said. Once again, she wasn't going to mention what she had done in her first true meeting with the green-skinned Avenger, but she still wanted to acknowledge what he had achieved. "Has… that not happened here?"

"There was this whole thing when he fought the military around San Francisco some years back, and after that… well, nobody's ever been able to say for sure if the Hulk is alive or dead any more," Susan explained. "We looked into a few reports from other parts of the world that suggest he's still around somewhere, but we've never really found anything definite."

"I see," Wanda said, suddenly remembering how often Natasha had expressed her own concerns for Bruce during their time on the Avengers. "That is… unfortunate."

"He was a friend back in your world?" Reed asked.

"We… had our ups and downs, but he was a good man," Wanda decided, before she felt the 'bed' she was lying on move. She stayed still until she had been taken out of the monitoring area, leaving her to sit up and look around at the people around her.

"Well," Reed Richards looked at her with a solemn expression, "keeping in mind my own minimal experience of the multiverse, from what my equipment can determine, not only is your whole body subtly out of sync with the rest of our universe, but there iseven a part of you that is actively existing outside of what we know as reality."

"My link to my other selves?" Wanda asked, even as she stood up and flexed her shoulders.

"Most likely," Reed nodded at her before he sighed. "From what I can tell, your state is unconventional, but there's no sign that you're in any kind of danger from being in this universe rather than your own at the moment. Unfortunately, while I can confirm that the link is there, and also say with reasonable certainty that your tale is backed up by science, given the circumstances of your arrival I'm reluctant to look into finding a way to send you back myself."

"Why?" Wanda asked, reminding herself that this wasn't the Reed she'd previously killed who'd been so quick to dismiss her needs; so far this man had nothing to anger her and she didn't have the corruption of the Darkhold to warp her thinking any longer.

"While I admit that magic is not my strong suit, I know enough to know that attempting to mix magic and science would not be a good plan in this situation," Reed explained. "That said, there is someone of my acquaintance who may be able to offer some further insight… and from what Peter told us about his own multiversal experience, I believe you are also acquainted with his local counterpart as well."