Petra Munteanu is secretly Wanda Maximoff (witchweird) wrote in thegalaxy, @ 2016-05-03 19:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !locale: tenebris, buffy summers, wanda maximoff |
WHO: Wanda and Buffy
WHAT: Wanda tries to tell Buffy about her brother and runs into difficulties
WHERE: Tenebris
WHEN: Some number of days after the vampire hunt (backdated!)
The streets of Tenebris near the spaceport were becoming familiar to Wanda. They were as crowded as any market, stuffed with goods that would appeal to space travelers, both in the shops and spilling out onto the pavement. She'd been into many of the shops, seeking leads on the goods she was trying to buy, and she recognized some of the shopkeepers and some of the regulars -- workers from the port stopping at a cafe, a trader she'd talked to yesterday haggling at one of the shops, aliens and humans that she'd just seen on the street.
To her mental senses, it was all a blur -- too many aliens -- and even more of a blur because she'd just come back from one of the rougher districts, where she'd been convinced that if she let down her guard for a moment, she'd be attacked. Either by vampires -- she was wary of vampires now -- or by ... anyone.
So she was feeling a bit stretched, tired and jumpy, as she walked down the street toward the port and her empty ship.
As she passed one of the shops that she'd visited before, a high pitched shriek made her wince. The shopkeeper inside was waving insistently; Wanda sighed and turned into the shop. "I have something you will be interested in," the shopkeeper -- a tall, spindly, and elaborately feathered alien with large, eerily glowing eyes -- told Wanda. But the shopkeeper had another customer who was looking at Wanda curiously from under the brim of a brightly colored hat. "I'll be with you soon," the shopkeeper told Wanda. "Please, look around while you wait. I promise you will not regret."
Wanda half-suspected it was all a ploy to get her into the shop, but she browsed desultorily anyway, her mind jumping from her disappointing afternoon to the tale of the rest of her time spent on Tenebris -- searching for more vampires with Buffy, though they hadn't found any. Buffy was recovered from her injury, though, Wanda had been amazed by how quickly she healed, and Wanda knew that however much she was tempted to stay here with Buffy -- she thought perhaps Buffy would not mind the company --
Her thoughts jumped, then, a jarring jumble of memories of teams she had known. Pietro, The Avengers...It was not very long since she'd talked to Clint Barton about Pietro, not so very long since she'd had a disturbing conversation about not joining the Avengers team, not here, not the resistance, and it was still mixed and disturbed in her head.
"I don't need to rush," she'd told Buffy a few days ago, snatching a few more days from her duties to her colony. She was reluctant to set out on her own -- she doubted herself, she realized suddenly, picking up a knick-knack from the shop window and pretending to examine it.
She doubted her judgment, called into question by Steve Rogers. She doubted her experience, the lessons she'd thought she'd learned at such a price. She doubted her memories--
No, she couldn't doubt her memories. The bad times, the war she'd experienced, the promises that HYDRA had made, so similar to the promises of the resistance here -- join us to fight the ones who destroy everything -- The rightness, the satisfaction, of the power she'd gained from HYDRA's experiments, and the difficulty of growing into it. The fire of revenge burning inside of her, the mistakes. It was sometimes tempting to disown what she was, what her choices and her memories made her, but she had to hold on -- to Pietro.
Wanda glanced up and stared through the window at the passing crowd, not really seeing anything but movement. Strangers.
And then she saw someone she recognized, even from a distance. Buffy.
As Buffy came down the street, Wanda just stared from within the shop window. Suddenly, she didn't feel quite so alone, but she knew it was temporary, because she was going to have to leave, and when she did, when she really was alone in the galaxy...
Then she would have to hold on, to herself, to her choices, to what was truly important. To her memories.
But seeing Buffy jarred loose another memory, of an offer. Wanda hesitated, doubt and fear warring with the kind of rocky certainty one gets when they hit the bottom and realize -- and it came to Wanda like a revelation -- she could not afford to doubt herself. She was all that she had.
But something had to change. She wasn't sure that she could hold on to what was important -- Pietro, like a flash behind her eyes -- as if her memories were a hoard of gold that she couldn't show anyone. Like a set of powers that she feared the reaction to. Buffy had accepted the powers...
Wanda leaned forward and knocked on the window so that Buffy would see her, but then changed her mind and headed for the door. The shopkeeper let out a high pitched screech -- Wanda had heard enough of this particular language to recognize a protest. She sent the knick-knack she'd been holding back to its place with a gesture, for once not trying to keep her powers unobtrusive. Probably no one in the shop would believe their eyes anyway.
"Tomorrow," she called to the shopkeeper, and stepped outside into the stream of strangers.
"Buffy!" she called. She thought her knock had already got the Slayer's attention, but she wasn't sure. She waited for Buffy to come even with her, and then fell into step with her.
It took her a moment more to clear her throat, suddenly tight, and look over at Buffy, and say, forcing the words out past the wall of doubt, "Do you remember when you said you would listen if I wanted to talk?"