No... of course not, he thought bitterly, anger tearing at him as Wanda sullenly walked away. Of course she couldn't give him proof. It seemed, in that moment, that nobody could. All he got was conflicting stories. From Loki. From Wanda. From himself. It wasn't as if he didn't want to believe her. Her explanation made enough sense in its absurdity that it could almost be true. Maybe souls could bypass time and space if enough power was behind it. Maybe he and Tommy, so alike in so many ways it seemed, were echoes of Wanda's lost children.
And maybe it was all a clever story designed to lure him into Wanda's wicked web. His head hurt from all the maybes. His body, from the prolonged tensing of muscles.
He said nothing as she turned. He simply turned and walked the other way. His feet carried him through Manhattan as if on autopilot, his mind lost in another place as he strolled aimlessly. How long he walked, he didn't know. Minutes? Hours? It didn't really seem to matter.
He trudged into his house as the first signs of sunset began to flicker on the horizon. Without even a word to his mom and dad, he walked up the stairs to his room and shut the door behind him. The darkness welcomed him like an old friend as he sat on his bed and pulled off his shoes. With the weariness of exhaustion setting in, Billy pulled his thick black comforter over himself and stared at his darkened ceiling, sleep evading him until the wee hours of the morning.