WHAT: Having a heart-to-heart conversation about the Timeslip Plot WHERE: Wanda's Cottage WHEN: Backdated to this past weekend WARNINGS: Tommy chokes up and everything is wholesome STATUS: Complete
The cottage was cleaned up… eventually. Wanda had taken her time. The boys had been a literal tornado of chaos; one zipping through the rooms as if he was on a perpetual sugar high while the other one animated pocket monster cards (there had to be a discussion about scooping Pikachu’s pebbles). Their home had become a mess of toys and snack wraps and candy and books - and blankets and pillows from the fort they made. It was incredible. She could tuck them into bed, kiss their foreheads before the lights went out, and remind them again that family is forever.
She missed them tiny and spastic with their made up songs but it was good to have them normal, too - and she knew Toph was happy about it. Wanda had maybe stalked (definitely stalked) network exchanges, saw that they had professed feelings and died many deaths on the inside about it. They were the good kind of metaphorical deaths, though. They still had Sil and she had made her granddaughter a literally insane amount of sticky ginger pudding, and having it all come to an end was bittersweet.
It was quiet now.
“I found Pikachu poop under the couch,” Wanda casually commented, sitting outside of the cottage with a mug of hot apple cider. It was the area she and little Tommy had hung around one night (he couldn’t sleep), and she had conjured up fireflies to catch in jars. Now she was sitting with big Tommy. There were no fireflies right now but she hoped he remembered. “I’m not upset. I just never thought that is a sentence I would say.”
Being small was way better than being old. Tommy didn't remember much last time when it came to being a lame, forty-something dad who couldn't tell good memes. He preferred the part where he was basically himself, just smaller, without responsibilities, and who could ask for ice cream whenever he wanted. Technically he still could—he had a job, that paid real money, where he could spend it on stupid things—but it was better when someone gave it to him for free.
It was doubly better when that person was Wanda, and she was being motherly, and just wanting her sons to have a good time. He remembered that feeling the most when he stopped being a tiny terror and returned to being a normal sized one.
Tommy tended to spend his time with Wanda when he wasn't with Toph or Billy. Not because of any specific reason, but Tommy was no good keeping himself company. And when he experienced the day faster than everyone around him, an hour was a week, and that was way too long to not speak real words at real people. Wanda didn't seem to mind.
"Okay, but look, I didn't put it there. That was definitely Billy," Tommy said, because it was definitely him and his default was to blame Billy. "I can't be held responsible for what he does when he's small or where he hides things. Maybe, maybe he was saving it for later, to throw at me."
“I want to question whether or not Billy would go that far, but.” Wanda squinted. No, she was not questioning it. Their sibling trickery ran deep. Pietro had thrown rabbit poop at her once yelling ‘look, chocolate!’ because they were tiny hard pebbles. Twins were drama and she has lived the experience with her own.
Anyway, enough about poop.
After taking a sip of cider, she set it down on the table and adjusted the faux-fur blanket draped over her lap. The weather was a little chilly but not unpleasant. “I know the last few weeks have been,” she paused to nibble her lip, “a lot.” There hadn’t been a terribly wide window of processing but they were the types to adjust quickly. They often had no choice. “You two were little, and Vision got to try out the role of parent and I think he enjoyed it. Do you - remember anything? Specific?”
Did he remember Westview? That was one of the hidden questions there too.
Being super fast often left Tommy super quickly glossing over social cues. But given that it was just him and Wanda, and the chilly night, and cottage vibe and no one else around? The only thing he had left to focus on was his mom, and Tommy was super aware of the stuff his mom was saying. Or well, not saying. He could read between the lines when he didn't have his head up his ass.
"Oh, this is a talk? We're having like a capital T talk right now?" Tommy asked, but didn't wait for an answer. He just settled into his seat, stretching out his long legs, and low-key drumming his heels on the stone. He shrugged, painfully nonchalant, because feelings and shit were not something he talked about often, but it was just them, and he felt safe with his mom.
"I remember some of it. Not like specific stuff, because I don't know, memories are weird—" Okay so he was lying, a little. He didn't know how much he was supposed to say, and he didn't know how much he wanted to. A little sliver of hope was growing inside of him and he hated it. Hope was for suckers and Tommy was not a sucker.
"Trick or treating was cool," Tommy said, scratching awkwardly at the back of his head and trying to play it smooth. "I didn't get to do it with the Shepherds. Or if I did, I don't remember. I'd rather not. Just the stuff with you and Vision and Billy, known poop thrower."
Wanda couldn’t fight the smile curling on her lips. She watched him as he thought and as he talked - because there was a lot about Tommy you could decipher if you took note of the little tells. Yes, she was well-aware about his allergy towards feelings but feelings were also important, and she did her best to touch base on them (lightly, if she could, but their dynamic and lives brought heavy feelings) from time to time.
“If you don’t remember specific stuff, then I’m glad it left an impression,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what the two of you even could end up retaining after that - but I wanted you to have fun. I wanted you to stay up past midnight with scary movies, and watch you divide the candy up and debate which ones were better.”
They were such minute details of life but they were normal ones, and while Billy had a more put together family that loved and supported him, Tommy didn’t. She wanted a chance to give that to him in any capacity. If not good memories then good feelings to at least carry with him if they were carried away into new worlds.
“Do you…” Wanda lifted a hand, her fingers fluttering in that way. A summoning of magic that was red at first and then spread, creating a sea of fireflies that lit up the darkening air around them. “Remember anything about these?”
"Don't let anyone fool you into thinking Dots are good candy," Tommy said, pointing at Wanda. He had gotten into several, heated conversations about the demon snack. Who picked hard gummies in boring shapes when every single iteration of Reese's was right there? But they weren't here to debate candy, even if that was the easy route to distraction and derailing.
Tommy watched Wanda's hands move, and the splay of red and then—the fireflies stirred something painfully nostalgic in Tommy's gut, and his whole expression went slack with watching them move around in their space. This was a visceral memory, an entrenched emotion that he couldn't forget if he tried.
What he remembered went like this: the sun setting on the cottage skyline; the smell of crisp cool air and rich, loamy earth; the heavy weight of the glass in his hand, and running and running and running after the fireflies; light speckling his vision, spinning around inside the mass of them; grabbing a slender, familiar hand of his mother; his other hand reaching for the strong, comfortable of his father; being lifted right off his feet for a blissful, mesmerizing moment, and then coming back to the ground once more as they swung him high; the uncompromisable feeling of being loved; and then the immediate crash of rivalry to catch the most fireflies in order to kick Billy's ass.
All of it played out intensely across Tommy's face, only for him to nod once, swallow hard, and say, "Yeah. I remember stuff."
Wanda caught the nearest one. She held it cupped in her hands so she could feel the tickle of delicate wings, the very minute twitch of stringy insect leg - and when her hands parted to let it free, they lit up. It was magic but it was creation magic, every bit as real as they were. She wished she had the thought to capture the moments of that evening with pictures to have it. Frame it somewhere like the rest.
But maybe it was best that she had the memory of living it versus being the person behind the phone, not even participating.
The bug flew away from her palm to join the rest. “The challenge was to catch them without powers,” Wanda explained with a smile, knowing that he said he remembered stuff but just in case the details were a little fuzzy. “Otherwise you lose, and you are very competitive at any age. I think it was the first time I saw you run around at a normal speed.”
Tommy was forced to keep up with their slowness. His powers always had him ahead of everyone else and there would be this great distance, but not that day. “That day was my favorite.”
Tommy watched her catch one. And without even thinking, Tommy was also reaching out—not with super speed, not with any speed at all, if anything it was slow—to capture one in his own hand. Whether it was because they were created by Wanda and naturally drawn to him or because he just vibed with the fireflies, one landed in his hand and he watched until it lit up even brighter.
"Fuck, mom," Tommy said, and his voice sounded all weird and strange and emotional. Shit, shit shit. But there was no stopping it now. "Mine too."
He seemed like he wasn't going to say anything else, because normally Tommy wouldn't even let his feelings get this far. But because he was safe with Wanda, and it was just them, he cleared his throat in a very painfully obvious way. He didn't need to clear anything, Tommy was just stalling because he felt incredibly fragile and he hated it.
"I don't remember half the shit that happens because it all goes by so fast but I remember that the most and it's—" Words were dumb, and he waved a hand in front of his face to somehow dismiss them, like everything he was saying was bad. This was not his territory. "I wish I stayed small, for a little while longer. I just want all the memories with you and Vision, and not all the other stupid ones I have before I met Billy."
Wanda wasn’t a stranger to the sentiment. She wanted that for herself and Tommy, too; all the memories with her children, as a family, Vision included (hadn’t that been the point of Westview?). Those days felt like it had been that whole incident but re-written and real with no casualties. She hadn’t been battling the guilt that came with running the Hex. The truth of the situation haunted the edges of her mind, reminding her of the psyches she held hostage and the children she held frozen in time so she could turn an entire town into her own dream dollhouse.
This had been a shame-free affair. It was nother selfish wish that had somehow come to fruition despite its brevity. It wasn’t deserved after all she had done but she had taken it and enjoyed it.
“Then,” she swallowed the lump in her throat, leaning into the table to prop her chin into her palm, “I’m glad we had the chance. There’s that universe out there - the one where I keep the both of you, and you try to eat the cookie dough way before it's even baked and you leave all your toys on the floor. Stepping on legos is a pain I’ll never forget, even dreamwalking, by the way.” Wanda let out a small, watery laugh. “You know I envy it. I wish I could have given that childhood to you. But if I could give you even the feeling of having some happy days as a kid, I will take it as some kind of win too.”
And the fact that he said he wanted memories with Vision too - that meant a lot to Wanda. She hadn’t wanted to push the subject. Having him around was still plenty to process (even for her) and Tommy had his reservations (rightfully so), but that gave her a little bit of hope.
Tommy was quiet for a long time. Whether that was because he was gathering his thoughts—all two braincells worth of them—or because he didn't trust himself to speak, he didn't know. He didn't want to know. He just parsed out all of Wanda's words into digestible chunks, slowly, so that he didn't miss them at all.
"We could still do that," Tommy said, casually, trying to return to that normal aloofness and pretend he didn't just almost ugly loser sob in front of his mom. He had a tenuous grip on it at best. "I mean, I'll be fucking older, and I probably shouldn't be leaving toys on the floor, and by toys I mean dirty clothes or a video game controller or something."
He watched her now, as she looked at him leaning on the table. "You're a good mom. I know you feel like there's a bunch of shit you're not good at, and you're holding on to me having good feelings rather than like actual memories as a win. But I don't know, you shouldn't just have to ask for the bottom of the barrel. Your happiness is important too. Do you want me and Billy to eat raw cookie dough or run around in the backyard or like... what mom stuff do you need?"
It was imprecise, the way his hands moved around—very Maximoff style, despite having no magic at all—but he was trying to conjure up the right words so that he could explain them to her. Tommy might have sucked at feelings but he wasn't irredeemable. And right now, he was showing that he had a squishy marshmallowy side for very limited people.
“I mean - you both have free range of this place, if I happen to walk in on you two eating raw cookie dough I would not be surprised,” Wanda mused. “Concerned about salmonella, sure, but not surprised.” Any chaos the twins brought to her doorstep was always accepted with open arms and yes, that did include Tommy punching himself in the balls over and over just so he could fly. “Look, Tommy–”
She held her hand out palm up. It was an offering if he wanted it, especially since she could tell he was struggling a little.
“I love you,” was how she continued and with a smile. “I wish I could have been there for you when you were a child. I’m sure my multiversal constant is that I always want to have the two of you, but the ‘mom stuff’ that I need... I already have it. It’s different from wanting to raise you, and spoil you and ground you for whatever ridiculous reason. I need you and Billy around, and I have it. I like to see the two of you live your lives with your friends and to know that there’s someone at home that Billy loves. That you have someone here who loves you here. Don’t think I didn’t see what Toph told Sil.” Wanda often stalked their interactions until it escalated to the whole ‘I want to make out with YOUR FACE’ comments. She did not need to be reading that. “You’re enough the way you are.”
Tommy saw the hand for what it was. And maybe, normally, he would have been like nah, it's cool, I'm fine or some other macho bullshit that had caused him to believe that emotions were for losers. But today, he reached back for his mom, and squeezed hard. He didn't continue holding hands, because that was the extent of Tommy's softness for physical affection. Also his hand was sweaty, and he didn't want to give away too much of his stress to his mom.
"You make this too easy," Tommy said, half a joke. He didn't realize that being a kid—mostly an adult one—could be easy. Someone always wanted something from him: good grades, better behavior, don't make waves or trouble or talk back to authority figures. Little did the adults of his like know that it was just him being rebellious because no one really liked him for himself. Wanda seemed to, and he wasn't going to question it.
"I feel like I could literally set a fire to a city block and you'd be like 'you're doing great' and—shit, don't worry. I'm not setting fire to anything. I'm just being extreme. But if that's what fulfilled me in life or whatever, you'd be supportive, that's what I mean. Supportive parenting." Which Tommy did not say, but implied, he never had. Shepherds didn't care unless he fucked up, and the Kaplans tried to get him to conform.
"Thanks for not making me change and shit."
Wanda took that squeeze, and she squeezed back. Holding hands wasn’t necessary. That small exchange spoke volumes. It was enough, too.
“No one could set fire to a city block like you would,” she shot back, her smile turning into something a little more wry. “I’ll support everything and anything for the most part, and there is nothing I would change when it comes to you.” Leaning back into her seat, she grabbed her cider to sip on it more. “It’s cheesy to say this and you may gag but - I want you to be happy, and loved. That is all. So tell me more about how you and Toph confessed feelings while we are on the topic.”
Now she was being, what someone may call, a little shit to her son. The smile became a grin, and her eyebrows did a very lame and embarrassing wiggle.
Tommy indeed made a gagging noise, because now that they were shifting topics and there were jokes and weird things he could hang on to instead of his own emotional vulnerability, deflecting came easy. "I'm happy, and loved or whatever. I feel it. Big old emotions of love, for real. Billy likes to tell me he loves me just when I think we've gotten a handle on being brothers and he's all needy and gross and—"
Oh, well. Tommy's brain sort of short circuited at mentioning Toph. Wanda was so perceptive and Tommy was so not and he felt sheepish about this sudden conversation. His mom was, definitely, being a little shit.
"First of all," Tommy said, holding up an index finger, "don't do that. The eyebrow wiggle thing, because now I'm going to feel weird like you're going to give me the birds and the bees talk. Which second, don't need to, I know it. Had a very clinically horrifying one with the Kaplans and I would like to save us both the trauma. And C, thirdly, whatever—" This was where Tommy swallowed hard, and looked away.
"We just did. I don't know. She puts up with all my shit, and didn't dump me while I was eight, and just knows the right things to do when I'm feeling crappy, you know, like Pokemon poop, so." He shrugged. Shruggie. McShrugs-A-Lot.
Wanda had to laugh about being called out on the eyebrow wiggle thing. It was absolutely terrible and really why she did it to begin with - gave them something to break the tension of the heartfelt conversation they just had. “God, no, I have no interest in ‘the talk’ with you at this age,” she said as the laughter died into a chuckle, waving her hand in the air. The fireflies continued to flutter on with their lights. “I’m just happy the two of you have reached that ‘I love you’ milestone. It can be terrifying.”
Considering Toph and Tommy expressed affection by typing at each other in ALL CAPS and affectionate veiled by insults - she had learned early on that Toph also had a hard time expressing her own emotions. This was a big step for them both.
“And I would also like to stay,” Wanda continued, setting her cup down to hold her hands up in this show of – was it surrender? Was it a ‘don’t hate me bro’ kind of thing? Who knew. “That I think she’s perfect for you, and that I also love her and whatever you are doing relationship-wise, it seems to be working for the both of you.”
Tommy couldn't explain why he suddenly got very light. Like someone who craved approval from authority figures, ew. He knew that Wanda approved of Toph—in fact they got along so well, that Tommy was worried they would plot against him in some nefarious, adoring way that girlfriends and moms did, and he would be screwed. But hearing it out loud? Oh god, he liked getting her approval on his choices, not just the bad ones, but the good ones like dating Toph.
"I mean, all we really do is yell at each other and then make out, so pretty easy. But don't use my moves on Vision. I don't think he'd like it very much." And then he eyebrow-waggled at her, but that felt even more weird than Wanda doing it to him. Nope, nope, nope.
"You should tell her that though. Toph," Tommy clarified as if there was any other her he could be talking about. "When I'm around, so I can hear it and see her reaction to you being all 'you and my son are perfect for each other and I'm so glad you shared your feelings for one another', you know. Mushy stuff."
And then Tommy grinned, practically preening. This was a good moment with just the two of them, and he thought he wanted to bottle up this whole day for later, when he needed the boost. "Thanks, by the way. You know for—" He circled his hand above his head to say all of it.
Maybe that light feeling was contagious. Wanda felt it too. “I absolutely will,” she answered him, tone and face dead serious. Like she said, she loved Toph - but she also wasn’t against doing some ‘trolling’ in her direction too. And the words were mushy and sappy, and the two of them could recoil in disgust however they wanted but she’d argue that they kind of liked hearing it, too.
Don’t worry. She didn’t dare say that out loud.
“But you’re welcome,” she tacked on as her face went back to looking content. Adoring was actually more like it, sorry Tommy. “Sit with me out here a little longer before you go?”
Soon the sky would look like it had its own fireflies, and it would get cooler so going inside would end up being a must, but she wanted to stretch this moment with him. He wasn’t tiny and trying to catch bugs in the name of a family-competition, but she loved it just the same.