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: A new crossover element is introduced here; I originally had other plans for certain details of this story, but once I got the idea to streamline a few ideas using certain characters from this particular film, everything just seemed to flow together much more neatly.

Scarlet Witch and the Three Spiders

Wanda was already certain that when this whole situation had come to some sort of resolution, the thing she would most appreciate was the chance to have a good night's rest. She had spent so long driving herself to explore her dreams when she was trying to find a world where her twins existed while under the influence of the Darkhold that she wasn't sure she even remembered the last time she had simply spent a night asleep rather than doing something more elaborate. Even if she was now ashamed of what she had done, at least she had a goal back then and knew what she was trying to accomplish; right now she wasn't sure how she had ended up in this mess, never mind how she could get out of it.

"How is he?"

"Peter?" Wanda looked up as the other two hers appeared, glad that she could give her other selves good news of any kind. "He's… it took a while, but I got through to him."

"And his suit?" Wanda Two asked. "The black suit, I mean?"

"I forced it away from him and destroyed it," Wanda affirmed, raising her hands to let off a brief burst of red energy. "I'm not sure what happened to leave it that way, but it seemed as though the suit wasn't… it didn't seem to be entirely there."

"Not entirely there?" Wanda Two repeated, her head tilted in confusion.

"I apologise; I mean that it was not there mentally."

"It was mad?" Wanda Three asked.

"In some form," Wanda nodded at her other self. "The best way to explain it is that it was… its mind was not intact, as much as such a thing can have a mind. I do not know how it happened, or how the creature came to possess Peter, but it seemed to have some knowledge of him and attempted to take control of his body, but it did not have sufficient mental strength to do anything more than a basic job."

"In what way?"

"It seemed to be driving him to focus on his life as Spider-Man and compelling his mind to ignore anything that would distract him from that goal."

"And when he had already given up so many other parts of his life…" Wanda Two noted with a sad shake of her head. "I can see how the suit might have been tempting."

It went unspoken that Wanda and her other selves had basically done the same thing when dealing with the Darkhold. Peter might have been taken by the suit by surprise while Wanda just made the mistake of believing she could control the Darkhold, but ultimately she and Peter had each attempted to escape their pain by relying on something else.

"Is… your Peter… is he all right?" Wanda Three asked.

"He will… need some time to recover, but he is resting now," Wanda sighed.

"Resting?" The other two looked at her with a probing stare.

"And you're… resting with him?" Wanda Two said with a cautiously pointed stare.

"It is not like that," Wanda said firmly. "He is… my only friend right now; I have no other feelings for him."

"No offence meant," Wanda Two held her hands up, her pointed expression relaxing into a reassuring smile. "My Peter is very happily married and a bit older, but he is… not without his appeal."

"My Peter is still dealing with the loss of his last partner," Wanda Three observed with a shrug. "I would… I doubt that he is looking for anything."

"And he is not Vision," Wanda concluded, feeling that one of them should say it.

It might have been his own ties to the Mind Stone, it might have been her role in his creation, it might have been the way he allowed her to teach him about humanity even as he helped her explore the new world of being an Avenger… none of them could define what Vision had meant to her or how exactly he became so important to them, but they all know that he was irreplaceable as far as partners were concerned. Their fixation on finding Billy and Tommy in the multiverse might have been taken too far, but they all acknowledged that they would not go looking for a new partner just to make some other person the father of their possible children.

"Anyway," Wanda clapped her hands together and looked around at her other selves, "if I dealt with Peter's sentient suit, how have you been spending your time?"

"I have assisted Peter Three in his confrontation with the Sinister Six," Wanda Three put in.

"Sinister Six?" the other two repeated.

"A collection of six men using advanced technology to commit crimes," Wanda Three explained with a brief smile. "It was an interesting challenge in its way, but they have been dealt with, and I was even able to help Peter capture the man who killed his parents."

"His parents?" Wanda and Wanda Two said simultaneously.

"In this world at least, they were killed by a man who attempted to force Peter's father to use his scientific research to create biological weapons," Wanda Three said, tone grim as she looked at her other two selves. "More recently, this man had hired the Sinister Six to trigger a potential economic collapse, but Peter and I helped the police to capture the Six and then found their employer with the aid of a group of four other enhanced-"

"Four?" Wanda-Two looked at her other self with a curious expression. "Would one of their number be a man known as Reed Richards?"

"You know him?" Wanda Three looked at Wanda Two.

"We all know him," Wanda Two said, her expression suddenly grim as she looked around their strange room. "He is the rubber man with a family who was part of that other team."

"Oh," Wanda and Wanda Three said simultaneously.

The worst part about her time under the influence of the Darkhold was that she still remembered everything she had done under its control and how she had justified it to herself. She could recognise how she had gone too far, and she was fully aware that it had been wrong now, but that didn't change the fact that she had killed the heroes of another world just because it was easier.

"And… he is a good man?" Wanda asked, a part of her not wanting to know the answer even as she knew her victim deserved for her to acknowledge what she had done.

"Peter regards the Reed of this world as one of its greatest heroes," Wanda Two observed. "Most notably, he apparently saved the world from a monstrous entity that literally eats planets."

"Eats planets?" the other two Wandas said at the same time once again.

"I do not understand how that is possible, but I accept that it is," Wanda Two affirmed. "I carried out my own research into the history of this world and I have confirmed what Peter told me."

"So Reed is an experienced hero in… your world?" Wanda Three looked sceptically at her other self.

"It is hardly 'my' world-"

"It is the world you are in at the moment; the term works," Wanda Three noted, before she continued her train of thought. "The contrast is just… unusual; the Reed of this world appears to merely be the head of a… think tank, I believe is the term? I am fairly sure he is only be a few years older than Peter."

"And he seems to be around the same age as Stark and Banner in… this one," Wanda Two observed.

"It is strange how their ages vary," Wanda put in, feeling a need to contribute to her other selves' observations. "We have encountered Reed Richards as an experienced adult in two worlds, and in yours he is a younger man?"

"The three Peters are not exactly all the same age either," Wanda Three pointed out. "I think we can all agree that the different appearances are the biggest surprise."

"I even met another variant in this universe."

"Of someone we know?" Wanda looked at Wanda Two in surprise. "Who?"

"Doctor Strange."

"What?" Wanda wondered what it was about Peter Two's world that inspired this much surprise from the hers that weren't in it.

"He is a bit older, but he was… he was far more polite about everything, really," Wanda Two explained, shrugging awkwardly at the other two hers. "I did not bring up our history with his counterpart to… avoid any awkward questions… but this Strange was able to offer some interesting advice on our situation."

"He was?" Wanda Three looked at her.

"He… he could not explain how it occurred, but he determined that it seems as though I have… I still retain a part of America's power."

"What?" Wanda wished that she could avoid repeating that word, but it seemed as though Wanda Two kept making so many shocking discoveries on her Earth that there was no better response.

"Peter speculated that this was how we ended up in these other realities in the first place," Wanda Two explained, her expression making her shame clear even if she wasn't talking to the two people guaranteed to share her feelings on the matter. "The theory was that when we destroyed the Darkhold, the backlash of energies meant that we still retained an aspect of America's power at the last moment…"

"And we split ourselves into three and sent ourselves to three different worlds focused on a man we have rarely met before now?" Wanda Three looked sceptically at her other selves. "I do not deny that Peter has been helpful-"

"Or we have been helpful to him," Wanda said defensively.

"Either way," Wanda Two said with a pointed stare at her other selves, "whether we have helped Peter or he has helped us since we became fractured in the first place, why would we have focused on him in such a situation before this happened?"

"That would be me," a fourth voice said.

It was small comfort to Wanda to realise that her other selves were just as confused by this latest turn of events as she was as they turned around to look at the new arrival in their strange mindscape. The woman in question seemed to be about Natasha's age, wearing a tight red suit with some kind of web pattern on it, with pale skin and long dark hair. The most distinctive detail was that she was wearing thick red glasses, shielding her eyes from view, even as she had a careful smile on her face.

"Who are you?" Wanda asked, after a quick glance confirmed that her other selves didn't know this woman either.

"My name is Cassandra Webb," the woman replied with a casual tone. "I am… in my world, I was a friend of Peter Parker's uncle."

"His uncle?" Wanda Two said in surprise. "As in Ben Parker?"

"At your age?" Wanda Three said uncertainly. "I thought that Peter's uncle was-"

"Timelines between universes aren't always consistent," Cassandra said with a dismissive shrug. "Unfortunately, just because I see the web doesn't mean I always understand it."

"The web?" Wanda repeated, wondering if she had been insensitive not to ask Peter about this herself back in their world before she wondered if he even knew about any of this.

"The web of life," Cassandra said nonchalantly. "I was born with some… health issues, but when my mother took extreme measures to cure me, it left me with… insight into the nature of destiny and the future…"

"That sounds… complicated," Wanda Two observed with a grim expression.

"You could say that," Cassandra nodded. "Long story short, I suffered some losses while trying to protect people from a spider-themed serial killer-"

"Spider-themed?" the three Wandas said.

"He had nothing to do with Ben or Peter, so don't worry about that," Cassandra shook her head. "I defeated this man and saved his would-be victims, but it left me with several injuries… and also a greater awareness of the web than I had ever felt before."

"And that… has something to do with you sending us to Peter?" Wanda Three asked, waving a hand between her other selves. "And splitting us like this?"

"My awareness of the web… through it, I was able to use the multiversal scar caused by your attempt to access the power of the Darkhold, as well as your connection to Peter and the multiverse, to arrange for your current situation, yes," Cassandra confirmed. "I can't fully explain how I did that in terms that you would understand-"

"This is one of those 'it makes sense to me but not to anyone else' things, right?" Wanda cut in. "Like when Vision tried to tell the rest of us how he perceived the Internet?"

"Most likely," Cassandra inclined her head at Wanda. "Vision… he was the synthetic life-form you loved, correct?"

"You know about that?"

"I can see the past as well as the future if I know what I'm looking for," Cassandra observed. "I was curious to know more about you once I had chosen you for this moment."

"Hold on," Wanda Two held up a hand as she looked at Cassandra. "If you… split us up in the first place… does that mean you can help us come back together?"

"Come back together?" Wanda Three looked over at herself.

"Well, we cannot remain separated like this for good," Wanda pointed out to her other selves. "If incursions can be caused if one person spends too long in another reality, what will the consequences be of one person being split across three realities?"

"Indeed," Cassandra nodded at the three Wandas before her expression became more serious. "You will be brought back together once you all truly want to come back together… but the time is not yet right for you to achieve that."

"We have to want to come back together?" Wanda-Two looked uncertainly at this woman.

"At the same time and with the same intensity," Cassandra observed.

"Ah," Wanda noted. She might not know much about psychology, but the idea of the three different versions of her managing to achieve that kind of focus at the same moment…

Even with her limited experience, she had a feeling it wouldn't be as easy as it sounded.

"How do you know this?" Wanda-Three looked uncertainly at Cassandra. "Does it have anything to do with this 'web' you told us about?"

"Quite," Cassandra confirmed. "If I told you more of what was to come… you need to react to this the right way, or they may anticipate your counter."

"They?" Wanda Two asked.

"Our counter?" Wanda Three said uncertainly. "As in we have to fight someone?"

"You have to stop the Hunt."

"The Hunt?" Wanda repeated. "What hunt?"

"They are hunting spiders," Cassandra said, her previous friendly smile replaced by a more serious glare behind her glasses as she looked around at the three Wandas. "And if you do not protect your Peters, then the web will be lost."

"What does that-?" Wanda began as Cassandra raised her right hand-

For a moment, all three Wandas experienced the sensation of being jolted awake as Cassandra snapped her fingers, accompanied by a flash of something blue filling their vision. However, the sense of being one mind again vanished as soon as it had formed, and the three Wandas were all sitting alone in their last resting-place, one Wanda still wrapped in the arms of 'her' Peter Parker (both fully clothed and sitting against a wall) while the other two were resting on couches of variable levels of comfort.

None of them knew what their strange visitor had meant by that last comment, but as each Wanda looked in the direction of their web-wearing friend (and how had he become so dear to them so quickly), all knew that they would do everything in their power to protect Peter Parker after he had shown them a kindness they had never imagined they could be worthy of after their actions at Kamar-Taj.

Even if we don't know what we're going to be protecting him from… the three Wandas thought, unknowingly united in thought for that brief moment.