WHAT: Peter and Wanda run into one another and have a talk about what it means to be like them WHERE: The kitchen of the Sanctum WHEN: Backdated to shortly after Peter's arrival WARNINGS: Some talk of loss STATUS: Complete
Peter had never seen much of the Sanctum Sanctorum before. Back in New York, pretty much the only parts of the house Peter had been shown was where Stephen had performed the spell, and then the basement/dungeon where he’d kept the other Spider-Men’s villains.
There was a lot to take in. Peter was tempted to just go poking through all the rooms, and maybe he might have done that if he hadn’t just finished nearly collapsing the multiverse by messing with powers he didn’t understand. He could probably avoid touching the Axe of Madness or the Ball Bearings of Blindness or whatever Stephen had tucked away in here, at least for a couple of days.
He did do some exploring, of course. How could he not? He didn’t go out of his way to touch anything, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t look. And looking tended to work up an appetite.
He’d seen the fridge throw things at Stephen when Stephen had made him pancakes, so Peter probably should have expected it now. Even still, he barely managed to duck out of the way when the fridge hurled something that didn’t quite look edible at his head (he’d seen cartoons of food developing sentience if left to rot long enough. In fact, he recalled a rather memorable episode of Cowboy Bebop that involved some old, forgotten lobster. He was pretty sure that sort of thing didn’t happen in real life). He slammed the fridge door shut, making sure to hold it closed for a moment to be sure nothing else would make a daring escape, and then, deciding he should probably clean up the… whatever the fridge had thrown at him, he turned around.
Peter turned around, and he was greeted by Wanda.
Yes, she sometimes had this habit of just - appearing, a scarlet haze of magic bringing her from one area of the Sanctum to the next. It could be creepy, like she was this terrifying omen of ancient lore (judging from her title, she kind of was?) lurking for a victim. Baba Yaga, maybe?
But she was harmless and it was not her intention to scare him. She had simply gotten used to having the Sanctum to themselves after everyone moved out, and having the privacy had been lovely. Gave her the privilege to walk around without having to worry about clothes, anyway.
(Don’t worry, Peter, she was clothed right now.)
“Are you hungry?” she inquired, cocking her head to the side. “The demon takes a while to warm up to new people. It can withhold food sometimes if it is feeling ornery. Or - throw things, as you may have experienced.”
It always seemed to like Wanda, though. She’s never had trouble.
Wanda didn’t scare him, exactly, though Peter still started when he saw her, unexpected as she was. The tingle only came when he was in danger, but he still wasn’t used to people being able to sneak up on him, and he hadn’t expected to see her.
“Oh,” Peter said, looking back at the fridge and then to her. “Only a little, I can wait until… later? For dinner?” Were they all going to have dinner together? He didn’t have any idea how things normally worked here, he realized, and he probably should have asked. Or had gone to seek out Wanda earlier.
“You must be Wanda!” he said, stepping toward her, hand already outstretch. “It’s nice to meet you. Officially, I mean. I’m Peter. Peter Parker? I guess we’ve already met, though I was kind of wearing a mask at the time, so I guess you wouldn’t recognize me?” She might have been too busy throwing cars in his general direction to have paid much attention too.
“We’ve met, yes,” she confirmed with a slow-forming smile. The times they have met they were engaged in some kind of combat - the first time against one another, and the second time had been a disastrous but glorious mesh of teamwork that involved people she barely knew. Then there was Stephen and his more recent details involving this boy in a mask.
Wanda knew he was young, but he looked so young and - well, that saddened her a little.
His hand was shaken, of course. Would be rude to leave him standing. “It’s good to formally meet you then, Peter Parker. Food here has gotten a little strange lately,” she said, no pun intended. “Stephen’s diet has changed to something distinctly non-human but there are options.” Wanda gestured over to the pantry cabinet. “There is nothing sentient living in there that would block your attempts.”
“Yeah, he mentioned something about that,” Peter said, making his way to the pantry. After a moment, he settled on a box of cookies to tide him over until dinner. “About how his diet had to change because he’d spent too much time in the Dark Dimension? Which sounds incredible. I mean, not incredible in a good way, exactly, because I don’t know what I’d do if I could never eat pizza again. But it’s like… evolution in fast forward? Do you think it’s changed his entire endocrine system?”
“I… don’t know,” Wanda blinked. Medical talk was beyond her. All she knew was that the human diet was no longer sufficient for him. Unless Stephen was masochistic enough to want to endure stomach aches, or unfortunate incidents in the bathroom but that was neither here or there. Finding recipes that agreed with the new changes was her latest project.
She would almost consider it fun if the circumstances didn’t feel so weirdly dire at the same time.
Cookies were a good snack - but there were healthier things in the fridge too, and without being assaulted by some projectile item she successfully handed a bowl of grapes. The demon knew what snacks were hers and what were Stephen’s. “I’ve been working on some dishes that are best suited for him now so our groceries are going to be eclectic. It’ll be good to have someone else to cook for, though? I always did when the Sanctum was a little more full.”
“Thanks,” Peter said. Teenage boy he might be, but when given the choice, he usually at least attempted to eat healthy. May had always made sure to have healthy snacks around when he was growing up.
“I can help too, sometimes, if you wanted,” Peter said. “I’m no Gordon Ramsey, but I know how to cook at least. Maybe not anything for Stephen though.” He did not know how non-human diets were supposed to work. He was more than a little impressed that Wanda and Stephen had been managing to figure it out, somehow. “What kind of things do you normally like to cook?”
Wanda plopped the bowl onto the kitchen island, nudging it towards Peter’s direction a bit after she plucked a few for herself. “I wouldn’t mind some help,” she smiled. “But I tend to cook a lot of different things. I have mastered some Sokovian dishes. A lot of American ones too.” Which meant she could cook burgers and make french fries, how impressive. “And I bake often so there will be a lot of experiments you can test for me. Stephen usually did.”
It wouldn’t surprise her if he still tried out of sheer stubbornness. She would have to figure out what to bake for him too - maybe she could find something they could both eat. “My sons help with that too. Billy and Tommy? They come around sometimes and are around your age.”
“Oh no, a baking guinea pig? Say it isn’t so,” Peter said, shooting her a smile as he popped a couple grapes into his mouth. “But I like Sokovian food. My –” He stumbled to a stop. May had liked experimenting with food from around the world, whether it was in her own kitchen or by going to restaurants. Sometimes the experiments had gone very wrong, but a lot of them had turned out great, and Sokovian food were ones they returned to often.
“I didn’t know you had kids,” Peter said, which was true. Then again, he didn’t know the personal lives of most of the Avengers. If any of them, other than Tony, had children, no one had told him. “Do they have powers too?”
My – His what? Peter didn’t continue that thought, and Wanda took note. She could make some safe guesses. Stephen had poured his heart out over what happened, how he was alone and how no one would remember him because that was the only way to fix things.
She felt for him. But she wouldn’t push, wouldn’t ask anything outright personal yet. Vallo would hopefully keep him here for a while. In this world, people did know him. It was much more kind than things back home.
“They do,” she chuckled fondly. “Billy’s powers are more like mine - magic, reality altering. Tommy took after my brother. He is very fast. They are technically from another timeline but I consider them mine regardless. Billy runs a Dungeons and Dragons campaign and Tommy is doing a delivery service. He can get you anything in less than two seconds. Maybe even one.”
“Dungeons and Dragons?” Peter asked, perking up a little bit. He smiled. “It’s good to know that no matter what universe we wind up in, D&D is still a thing.”
Not that Peter had really had much of a chance to play it before; it used to just be him and Ned, and now Spider-Man kept him too busy for anything like that. But maybe now that he was here, he’d be able to. Vallo sure seemed like it had enough heroes that he could probably take the night off now and then.
Wanda had an inkling he may be interested. Peter seemed like the type. “You should join,” she encouraged, leaning into the kitchen island and resting her elbows on top of the counter. “It gives you a chance to meet more people, make friends. Eventually you begin to live a life here that keeps you distracted from the one you have at home.”
That was how she and Stephen were dealing, anyway. They had so much to look forward here while they were so much they dreaded happening back in their own timeline. Might as well focus on what they were able to control instead of what they couldn’t.
For a moment, that sounded great. He’d always wanted to have a group of friends to play D&D with, and sitting around fighting imaginary goblins and demons with dice while stuffing your face full of pizza sounded like one of the best ways he could think of to spend the evening.
And then he remembered his last group of friends, and what had happened with them. To keep them safe, to let them live the best life they could lead, he’d decided to stay out of their life. Being friends with a superhero wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. Was it really fair to make a new set of friends here, when all he might be doing was putting them in danger?
“Do you think people like us can really live a normal life?” The question slipped out before he’d had time to think about it, and then he started. He barely knew Wanda. Definitely not well enough to start asking her weird, existential questions out of nowhere. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that,” he said quickly. “I just… I’ll just grab a few more grapes and be on my way.”
“No no,” came Wanda’s quick protest, shaking her head and pointing a finger at him to stay put. “You don’t need to go away. That question has… plagued me a lot more than I would like. I understand why you ask it.”
Heroics were overrated. Having power - it was not always a blessing. Some days it felt more like a curse. Agatha had revealed that magic had always coursed through her veins but it should have died off as she gotten older; instead amplified when she connected with the Mind Stone. Then to know that all of her experiences - every choice, every mistake and action, would ultimately shape her to become some mythic figure of mass destruction? She couldn’t win. She would continue to experience grief and loss in a vicious cycle that seemed unbreakable. A normal life wasn’t in the cards for her.
But that was home. That was there, this was her and things wouldn’t be normal here either. Vallo did give her a sense of normalcy she could live with, though. “I don’t think we will ever get normal lives,” she finally answered. “Not in the sense that other people that are not like us get. There will always be something. There will always be - someone, trying to kill you. Or trying to do something you can’t let happen. You learn to live with that. You also learn to redefine what normal will mean to you. It just takes time.”
“If someone’s always trying to kill you, it seems like it would be…” he frowned, trying to think of right way to frame it, “irresponsible to try. My friends were nearly killed back home because of me.” May was killed because of him. “What right do I have to keep putting innocent people in danger?”
“You don’t,” Wanda answered bluntly and plucked a few more grapes from the bowl. She held one between her thumb and index finger, checking for any funny imperfections before dragging her eyes to him once again. “But people will make choices to involve themselves if it involves someone they love. You can’t control that.”
Although they did, didn’t they? Control that with a spell that most likely would have ramifications. Magic’s ratio of doing this versus harming things was grossly off-balance - it always seemed to tip towards harming things. The consequences weren’t always immediate. “Stephen… told me what happened, with everything. I’m sorry. It must still feel very fresh.”
Peter crossed his arms over his chest, trying to look relaxed but managing to look nothing but uncomfortable. “I keep telling myself that it was for the best,” he said after a minute. “That if everyone know who I was, then eventually I would get them killed, and that they’re safer now, and now they’ve got all the opportunities that being friends with Spider-Man would’ve taken from them.”
But he couldn’t always make himself believe it. Logically, he knew it was true. Logically, he knew he’d done the right thing when he’d decided not to tell MJ who he was. He knew it was selfish to wish that MJ and Ned were still with him, that the three of them were going to MIT together, and everything else. It didn’t make him want it any less.
There were plenty of things Wanda could say to him. Perhaps mention that their world was mayhem - that innocents always died when people like them (the Avengers) were involved. That, perhaps, if knowing Peter Parker didn’t kill them then something else down the road related to all the peculiar, dangerous threats the world faced would.
She doubted his friends wanted this outcome, too. They didn’t have a choice in the matter. But those weren’t things he needed here, and he’d done the only thing he could do in those circumstances. It was difficult, and it was selfless.
“If it’s the choice you can live with,” Wanda began carefully. “Then… you made the right one, I think. Some things here may be temporary but I hope you can find some kind of peace.”
“I think I can,” Peter said. At least, he hoped he could. He couldn’t live with himself if MJ had gotten killed, if Ned had. He couldn’t live with himself if he’d destroyed the fabric of humanity without doing what he had to do to make sure that didn’t happen.
Compared to that, having everyone forget you wasn’t so bad, really. Especially not when he was here, and no one had forgotten him at all.
“Thanks,” he said, giving Wanda a smile.
“No need - I don’t even know if I helped with anything,” she smiled back softly. Wanda was always willing to listen, though. That was maybe the best she could do in this situation.
That, and maybe some dinner. Which brought her to the next thing: “And if you’re interested in taste testing some things you can help me with dinner. It will get you some bonding time with our fridge friend here.” Wanda’s thumb jutted towards their haunted icebox. “You will need it.”
“Hey, you helped me get some real food from the fridge demon.” Peter smiled, popping another grape into his mouth. But just having someone to talk to had been help enough. “And yeah, I’m a pretty handy assistant chef and an even better guinea pig.”
And helping someone cook dinner, well, that was exactly the kind of normal Peter needed right now. Even if it did involve a fridge demon.