@all | before the event

[industries]

> ts@abraxas-proxy:~$ wall "People's memories of this place"

[ Anyone unfamiliar with computer terminals might be taken aback at the mechanical font that scrolls across their vision, though the jumps and starts in typing speed leave no doubt that a very human brain is behind the text. ]

> Broadcast message from ts@abraxas-proxy (tty/1) :
> People's memories of this place
>
> Don't normally crowdsource, but
> has anyone out there ever heard of someone who got home and actually
> remembered their days here at the renfaire?
>
> Not looking for peer-reviewed analysis.
> I'll take crumbs
> or
> whatever else we've got here on Mind-Reddit.

Comments

[carmesi]

[it's weird how that apology comes— how wanda's been looking forward to something like it for so long, for something that would make her pain and suffering and trauma valid. but it's just there.

and it doesn't change anything. it doesn't make her feel better or worse, it doesn't make her feel for anything.

her words are no longer stilted; rather, it's like she's been wanting to say this for so long, to anyone who would listen.]

Making choices is something we have as humans that no one can take from us. Right choices and wrong choices. We try our best.

In the end, Vision got to make a choice. He got to be human even if just for one moment. And he was so good, Stark. So much better than any and all who came back from The Snap.

[—even herself.]

He wanted a world where what he loved the most could continue to live, flawed as we humans are. So, the choice you made — I understand it. As a parent.

[industries]

[ Guilt's been a strange bedfellow, these last few years. It's been a companion to Tony since Iraq, and maybe even before – always there, howling, ready to grab him by the throat the second he faltered, to drag him into the dark.

It was something you ran from, and Tony did. He fought, he built, he protected – to give back. To find something, anything to fill the chasm – feed the monster. So it wouldn't devour him whole.

But it's been different, since the Snap. Since Morgan. The monster's there, but it's – chained. Quiet. He can look it in the eye.

Which is why he's able to see it, in Wanda's words. The shape of a monster. ]

> You're right. He was the best of us, which is
> which is why you know he would never call himself "better" than billions of lives, he
> cared too much about them.
> Assigned each one of them too much value.

[ Then it clocks, like a punch. ]

> Parent?

[carmesi]

[and that still made vision so much better, because of that. so even if he would never call himself better, wanda will — relentlessly — because he was taken from her too soon, even if now she has made some moderate peace with his absence.

the question, though, makes wanda wonder just what exactly stephen explained about her situation to the rest of the avengers. did he leave out the part about how she had gone mad wanting to get to her children, children that were made with magic (and were so real to her), about how she hunted and killed others indiscriminately just to get to the kids that were not hers to have?

hm.]

I had children, too. Twin boys.
Did Stephen not say?

[industries]

> We
> don't chat much.

[ Unless it has to do with a certain dying Victorian hextechnologist, but.

Tony's brain races, sifts through memories old and new – and old-new. Sam had mentioned it, something about Strange taking his own little trip down memory lane, and Peter – Peter had said something too. About Wanda, his meet-ups with her via the Horizon. How she was so nice to him, because...

Something clicks, laterally. An unfinished thread of conversation. ]

>
> You asked about his body.
>
> It was chaos after the Snap. Emotional, logistical.
> The team brought his body home, to the compound, but
> chain of custody got scrambled.
> SWORD maneuvered, recovered him under some Accords provision.
> We were all
> distracted. Trying to figure out how to
>
> how to cope.
> Guess certain agency heads didn't suffer that particular weakness.

[carmesi]

[ah, answers to a question she kept wondering about. she never blamed anyone for being unable to keep vision's body, because from what hayward had told her, it seemed unlikely they would let it just be. in the end, tony's words only confirm what she imagines it must have been like.

those five years.]

I spoke with Hayward. SWORD's director at the time. He wanted to bring Vision back online as a weapon. Said that I could do it because of the powers given to me by the Mind Stone.

He wanted to have me killed after that. Me and my boys.

[why does it matter, right now?]

But he was arrested. Vision... is something else now.
I'm not sure.

It doesn't matter anymore, Stark.

[she doesn't send another message until a while later:]

Is it a message for your daughter? Morgan?

[industries]

> Yeah, I remember him. Piece of work.
> Figured that's exactly what they were after, but
> also knew that without the spatial resonance with the Mind Stone, he
> Vision
> wouldn't
>
> I mean, even the Wakandans couldn't untangle him from it.

[ Another casualty to Thanos, and one that couldn't be – wasn't – undone. Which begs the question...

My boys. Something else. It doesn't matter anymore.

Not for the first time in this place, Tony feels like he's hearing a whole conversation and only understanding half of it. It takes him a second, in overlapping memories of uneven clarity, to remember – right, he'd heard something about that. From Peter. Peter, who he's been looking after for months. Peter, who's been gone for five years.

Just like Vision.

So how... ]

> Yeah. And Pepper.
> I just
> I'd like them to know I'm okay somewhere.
>
> Peter told me about your kids. Said it was
> complicated, somehow.

[carmesi]

[suppose no one expected to have everyone who got struck out by the snap to return, and whether by design or pure luck, hayward must have seen it as an opportunity to do just as wanted back in westview.

piece of work is right. it feels strange to feel validated by something tony's said—something she can agree with. on the other hand, having no one back home in her world means that she's never looked into the possibility of multiversal messages being delivered.

perhaps— no, she's not one to call tony out on the morality of selfishly wanting the comfort of family when goodbyes have already been said.]

No secrets between you and Peter? Makes sense.

[she's fond of the kid, and as much as she knows there's this strong familial connection between him and tony, wanda would like to believe peter wouldn't just say everything to him.]

If you have a question, you should ask it.

[industries]

> Unless he's cutting curfew, don't think so.

[ It's a joke. Sort of. Try as he might to protect him – armor him – the kid's always had a heart of his own, always thrown himself into the midst of danger whether or not Tony shoved him away from it.

But that's exactly why he's good at it, right? The hero gig. ]

> How about
> how to put this delicately
>
> how did you have kids with a dead man?
> A dead
> synthezoid, even?

[ It's blunt. But fair. ]

[carmesi]

[expect the science man to ask the science question. somehow, wanda thinks that just saying 'magic' would not quite suffice, and raise more questions instead.]

I created a world of my own with my magic. Anchored his soul in it. With it came the soul of two boys who chose to be born as my sons.

[a dream and a wish, with all the vagueness of magic dripping from wanda's words into this explanation that severely lacks context. the grief, the pain, the unconscious mind control, the compartmentalizing, the realization of a prophecy with her smack dab in the middle of it.]

But I couldn't keep them. It was a broken spell to begin with.

[and she dreams of them still, every single night. she dreams of a life with her family, with her white-picket fence ending, but it all feels as torturous as a nightmare—dangling in front of her something she could never have. it never takes long for them to scream at her, to turn scared eyes towards her, begging her to not hurt them.]

Do you dream of your daughter?

[industries]

> Oh. Well
> why didn't you say so.

[ Magic. There it is, once again, clouding the edges of his assumptions, providing a set of cosmic variables that he finds unsettling but whose influence he can no longer exclude from his understanding of the universe. He knows there still must be natural laws at play, even with the crazy assertions coming from Wanda's shimmering text – was able to analyze and understand enough of it to create nanotech scaffolding to harness the stones that controlled the cosmos, but – there's still a part of him that has a hard time believing the impossible, even after holding the proof in the palm of his hand.

The next topic she poses is easier, and harder. ]

> Every night.

[carmesi]

[every night.

wanda knows the torment of that, still dreaming of her children in another universe, as they pick up the pieces of what she's done and how she almost destroyed everything that was precious to them.]

Are you ever in those dreams?

Dreams are a window to other versions of ourselves within the multiverse, living lives parallel to our own.

[know that they will be loved—

there may very well be a tony in the multiverse who lives to see his daughter grow old.]

[industries]

> Right.

[ He can't bring himself to say much else, in the face of something so whimsically cruel. Because that's what it comes down to, isn't it? Versions of reality. Objective differences in dimensions that manifest in subjective experiences – sorrow and loss, relief and joy.

Infinite hims, infinite thems. Cold comfort to someone whose connection has been severed, who wakes every day in a lonely room.

He hears a knock at the door. Turns his head. ]

> Hey, I gotta go, just

[ He pauses as he rises from his chair. It was a broken spell. He thinks of the monster. ]

>
> I'm here to talk, if
>
>
> listen, I know you hate me, it's fine, just
> if you need it.
> I'm here.

[carmesi]

I don't hate you, Tony Stark.

[perhaps it'll mean something for him to see that. the grievances he caused her and her family are in the past, and the greatest of them all was something he had no idea happened. people change, the past doesn't define them, especially when someone is so willing to give it all up for the greater good.

one man in exchange of the universe. one family in a perfect suburban home in exchange for the freedom of a neighborhood.

different, but not all too dissimilar.

wanda isn't saying she forgives him, but she's putting aside her anger. she's letting go of that—has let go of that for a while now. maybe, if she can do this much, there might yet be hope that the children she terrorized would be able to put aside their anger, too, and perhaps forgive her some day.

she doesn't send tony anything else. not anything to say she appreciates the offer, or that she'd like to extend it to him in return, too. perhaps the words she leaves him with will be enough for the both of them for now.]