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Tweak says, "It's gettin' hot in herre..."

ᴡᴀɴᴅᴀ (

hexx) wrote in

avengers_logs,
@ 2019-07-16 13:23:00

Who: Peter Parker & Wanda
What: A sugar coma and cheesy movies, plus Wanda gives some insight on spidey sense
When: Before the time jump
Where: Wanda & Vision's apartment
Rating: Green
Status: Complete

As rough as Peter’s week had been, he was pretty sure his alternate universe self was having it even rougher.

The dreams - outside of being nightmarish and awful and full of one of his worst fears confirmed - had been weird, even more than Twilight Zone-weird. While he knew there were others in this reality who had experienced the same before, it was his first time stumbling through a sea of memories that both were and weren’t his own. He remembered living and dying in the same universe that Tony had sacrificed himself in five years later. Peter used to think that world felt more like his home than this one, but now he was guiltily grateful he wasn’t in it.

Tony was here. Natasha and Vision were still okay, too. Though knowing that eased the grief, his anxiety had skyrocketed. He couldn't focus in class, and it was hard to look away from Ned - when this was the one thing he couldn't tell him - and claim nothing was wrong. And so when Wanda reached out to him with the promise of cookies and company, Peter leapt at the chance to be around someone he could be honest with. As soon as the school bell rang, he hit up some bakeries and took the train over to 30 Warren, for once not so eager to be swinging around. He needed a break from Spider-man, at least until his nerves quieted down.

“All right... I've got - some pastry things, brownies, and a couple of cannolis. And some kind of little Polish cake? I don’t think any of them are gonna be as good as your cookies, though.” Peter sat down a few bags of his findings on Wanda's countertop, pulling a few dvds out of his backpack next. "And I know I said I was bringing some bad movies, but I brought Indiana Jones too - and that is definitely not a bad movie.”

Making himself slow down, Peter looked away from his offerings and over to Wanda. “How have you been?” With the dreams, with the recent mission, with life - it was a question that could cover a lot of ground.

There was certainly no shortage of desserts available at her and Vision’s apartment now, and Wanda was perfectly fine with that. Her contribution had been a baking staple - tender, chewy sugar cookies. They were absolutely perfect (if she did say so herself), flavorful and buttery - she hadn’t gone full-out with the royal icing, but had sprinkled colored sugar atop them instead.

The best part was that the whole apartment smelled delicious - like sweet cookie dough and fresh vanilla bean, split with a paring knife (which she had done).

“Well, try one of my cookies and you can let me know how they compare. I’ll make us some tea,” she laughed a little, since tea and cakes and cookies all went well together. She busied herself with putting the kettle on, glancing at the Indiana Jones DVD and then back at Peter. “I have been well. Various missions have been good distractions - though either way, it takes time to sort out how you feel about remembering what another version of you went through.”

That included death, war, bloodshed, and more death - poignant, painful ones that cut deeply. Wanda’s own death had been peaceful for her, simply because she was tired of loss and wanted it all to end - then she was wrenched back into a world where Vision was still dead, and Natasha and Tony had joined him in whatever lay beyond this life.

The cookies were - if possible - even better than last time. As a testament to just how good they were, Peter for once didn’t stuff it down eagerly; this was the kind of thing that should really be savored rather than inhaled. “You could totally win one of those baking shows with these. Like the Great British Bake Off? My aunt watches those all the time. The judges always try to say one critical thing but I don’t think they’d be able to with these.”

And although that praise was coming from a very hungry and appreciative teenaged boy, Peter wasn’t even close to exaggerating. The cookies were a certain comfort, which helped when the conversation moved to more difficult things.

“Yeah,” Peter agreed a little more quietly; distractions were coping tools he was used to, and time - as his aunt had told him so many times - might not heal all wounds, but it did soften some blows. This was uncharted territory, though. Awful things had happened somewhere but not quite in this universe…it took some getting used to. “You’ve been here for a while, right? This is my first time with dreams like that.” From what he’d gathered, his reality of dusting on Titan had been another dream for the Tony here, and the network was a jumble of people who had come from different points in time.

“Do the memories ever get...” He paused to think on a word that fit; his perception had processed it with that same tingles he associated with danger. If those tingles were on steroids, anyway. “Less loud?”

“I don’t think they do,” Wanda admitted. Her mind had ‘downloaded’ a whole other set of memories before this one, and they felt just as real - like she had experienced them herself, and she recalled with perfect clarity the good parts (escaping to Scotland with Vision, their time together) and the bad (having to kill him, feeling his death so intimately and simultaneously feeling actual heartbreak, glass pieces barely glued together after Pietro turning to dust with the rest of her).

She poured them two cups of tea - into two mugs, nothing fancy. It wasn’t dainty cups and saucers made of eggshell china or stirring spoons lined with gold. “When they come, they come very...forcefully.” It rattled the brain, literally. “Especially for those of us who are sensitive to changes in the atmosphere and sensitive to other people’s thoughts and feelings - were they loud for you?” she asked, since she knew Peter had that spidey sense that was all kerflooey.

“Like a freight train. It still kind of is,” Peter admitted. It helped to hear that it was normal (or at least as normal as one could get in circumstances like these) for those who had heightened abilities, but he was at a slight disadvantage when the working of those senses were still a mystery to him.

“I think my head really thought I was there. So it’s like…all these echoes of danger when the danger isn’t even in this universe. Sorta like some false alarm? I mean, on my way here a squirrel ran out in front of me - I was expecting something super scary cause of how much warning the sense was giving.”

Which meant that a handful of New Yorkers today had gotten plenty of entertainment in seeing a teenaged boy jump a mile when confronted with a scurrying rodent. Stranger things had happened, at least. “I just kinda wish there was a way to turn it off sometimes,” Peter said as he started plating up the desserts he'd brought.

“Or that it didn’t get so out of control when I get all…” It was hard to find a word that encompassed what seeing the loss in the other universe made him feel, so he went for the simple. “Upset?”

Wanda squinted thoughtfully, hands wrapped around her mug. She helped out with bringing their whole smorgasboard of sweets to the living room by telekinetically lifting the plates - red wisps crackled and sparked; it was like something out of that Beauty and the Beast ‘Be Our Guest’ scene. Then she settled on the sofa, sitting cross-legged, motioning for Peter to make himself comfortable too.

“Unfortunately, I doubt there is a way to turn it off. Your ability is precognitive in nature, it’s basically like...seeing or sensing something before it happens,” she said. “It’s like how people who have precognitive visions or dreams can’t fully control when they appear. Some things just cannot be turned on and off like a switch.”

However, she was certain there was something they could do. “There is a way to improve the effectiveness of the ability,” she added. “If you fine-tune your other senses, your danger sense will be sharper. If that sounds doable?”

“I think it does,” Peter said, settling down on the couch too. He handed Wanda the pile of dvds to look through - Indiana Jones along with some truly hilariously bad movies like The Giant Spider Invasion and the Son of Godzilla, all prime distraction tactics. “Maybe it's like a radio frequency. When there's too much input from what I see and hear and feel, the station gets too crowded and so...static buzz. Lots of it.”

The times in his life when he'd gotten the most coherent kind of warning from the spidey sense was when he was single-mindedly focused on what was in front of him. It was already easing up here that he was away from school and off the streets - Wanda's company safe space where he could think without the pressure of having to hide anything.

“Is there anything you do with your powers when things get haywire?” Their abilities might have been wildly different, but maybe there was a common thread to be found somewhere in there. “To help control things?”

Giant Spider Invasion? Wanda quirked a smile, as she studied the back of that DVD. These movies all seemed like exactly up Peter’s alley. Of course, she had seen exactly none of them so she was open to pretty much anything.

“With my telepathy, it was...difficult at first. I didn’t really have anyone to help me,” she mused. It was her by her lonesome, no one to coddle her or hold her hand when she was at her ‘nose bleeding, mind-faltering, thoughts sliding into hell’ worst. Then she began studying with Stephen and that was an immense relief. “Over time, I have become more comfortable with it - most of all, it does take time.” And Peter was still young - he would struggle, probably for awhile.

She selected the Son of Godzilla and put it into the DVD player. “Your danger sense will never stop either - the powers of the mind are infinite and as long as I am alive, my telepathy keeps going. Your powers will too. But I just remind myself to work with it, not against it. That’s what you must do too, whenever you feel like you are losing control - you grip it again and keep going.”

Their gifts were their greatest burdens. She knew that well, too.

The more Peter learned about Wanda, the more he got a glimpse into how strong of a person she really was. There had been a period of months where he had to grapple with the reality of his powers alone, but nothing about his outside world had changed - he’d still been safe at home in Queens with his aunt even if she hadn’t known the truth till much later. He couldn’t imagine going through a transformation like that without a support network close.

“I’m gonna remember that,” Peter promised. With it, not against it: Wanda had phrased it in a way that made a whole lot of sense to his brain. And from someone who dealt with powers of the psyche much more complex than his own, he knew the advice was the best he could get. “Maybe…we could train together sometime? Maybe even in the Sanctum, if Dr. Strange would be cool with that.” Training powers of the mind seemed like it might need a different setting than a regular old gym.

He grinned when he saw the movie she picked and reached over to snag another one of the cookies. “Baby Godzilla’s my favorite in this one. The giant spider they fight gave me nightmares when I was a kid, though.” He pulled a face. “Kind of ironic now.”

“Yes, we can do that,” Wanda nodded happily. “At the Sanctum. We can work on your other senses too, like I said. Make them stronger, that way your danger sense will sharpen up as well.” They could do something in the Mirror Dimension, lots of somethings. It was the perfect place to train, to grow, and push yourself to the fullest extent of your abilities.

And she’d be very pleased to help Peter - it felt good, like paying it forward after all of the wonderful tutelage she’d received from Stephen.

She took a cannoli and bit into it, the cream leaving a mustache on her upper lip before she found a napkin. But it was so delicious - honestly, she loved sweets. “Giant spiders are scary anyway, even if you are a good spider,” she giggled, a twinkle in pale blue eyes.

These days, the movie was probably more campy than anything else - but she would enjoy it and the company as well. It was fun to get your mind off the more dire subjects sometimes - not to mention they both really needed it. Even if that distraction was, in fact, a giant spider.

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