sixthiterationlogs | 008 Who are you? [OPEN]

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008 Who are you? [OPEN]

WHO: Wanda Maximoff
WHERE: All Over
WHEN: November 10th – 22th
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: Mentions of traumatic events.

At first it was small things. Wanda forgot names and faces of those she met in the village. Something would remind her again but each day was harder. Her memories had become unclear and it took a specific question or comment to pluck a memory into focus. After a few minutes into a conversation she'd remember someone but the memory would slip away a moment later. Then she started to forget events. How long had she been in the village? It was almost a year or was it a few months. The sun wasn't going down... the fireflies... drowning. Wanda was acting strange but managed to keep her thoughts and concerns to herself. It was only after the feast that everything got worse.

November 11th - 12th | House 20

That morning, Wanda couldn't remember where she was. She woke up in her room but it was unfamiliar to her. Panic jolted through her limbs as she scrambled to get dressed and pack a bag to take with her. She didn't know where she was going but she felt like she couldn't stay here. Wanda packed a change of clothes, a bottle of whiskey that she didn't remember steeling from the feast and some food. With her backpack slung over her shoulder she crept out of the room and down the hall towards the front area of the house.

Wanda wasn't aware that Clint lived there too or that he was out that morning. All she knew was that she had to get out of here, get somewhere safe. When she stepped onto the front porch she paused.

"Where am I?" She muttered the words to herself before fleeing out of the house and into the closest patch of trees.

November 13th - 16th | Forest

Surviving; that was what Wanda had to do. She moved through the forest, tracing her way back to town in order to swipe things from a few of the houses and inn. She could be found hunting or searching for a place to sleep in one of the broken or abandoned houses. There were flashes of memories now but they were fleeting, like sand shifting and falling through her fingers. Her memories had no context and it was starting to drive her crazy.

"I am an Avenger!" She shouted at the tree before punching it hard with her fist. Then the memory slipped away and Wanda felt a new kind of panic rise through her.

"Pietro? Where are you?" Her voice shook. There were hazy imagines. Her brother was shot, he needs her help, but then those images would be forgotten.

Her brother would never leave her side. Not like this. Where was he?

November 22nd | Inn Roof

Wanda didn't know what was going on anymore. She knew that she wasn't in Sokovia, despite the cold weather, but she couldn't remember anything else. Had Hydra done this?

A list of unanswered questions filtered through her head as she sat on the roof of the inn. She liked listening to the people bustling around below her, it made her feel a little less alone. Her memories were hazy and unclear and if she focused on something for too long it would be even harder to recall. She wanted to scream and yell but she didn't even know who to blame.

She popped the lid to the whiskey bottle she had stolen and drank. It wouldn't help but maybe for a few hours she'd be numb to the pain that was welling inside of her. It took a lot for Wanda to get drunk but she knew that this bottle would do it. She would also be sleeping on the roof for the night, nestled in the snow that had been left after the storm.

Wild Card

[ooc: If you want to interact with Wanda while she's experiencing any of the past events in 6i, you are welcome too. She's been around for awhile and can get stuck in remembering that something is happening when it isn't. These memories would happen before the 10th but I'm totally open to it.
Her tread tracker has the posts for those events if it interests you and you'd like ideas.

You are also welcome to tag at any point in the prompts.]

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Wanda pressed the bottle to her lips before tilting her chin back. Alcohol burned pleasantly down her throat as the man's call reached her ears. She dropped a critical gaze to Raleigh. She didn't know him. Not anymore. Not in passing and certainly not as a resident of the small village. Wanda only knew that she was far from home and that her brother was somehow missing.

She didn't understand what was going on but after days of searching she felt a pit of hopelessness gather in her chest. The alcohol helped with that.

"I'll live." She replied, though the words left an uncomfortable taste in her mouth. "Do you know what it feels like to lose the most important thing to you?"

Raleigh gives her a sad, hollow little smile. "That's...loaded. I do, but for me that was my brother. I don't know what it'd be for anyone else, though."

A wife, maybe, or a child. He doesn't know if he could deal with that kind of loss again and he aches for her if she's lost something like that.

"You've lost something, I'm guessing?"

Wanda's gaze dropped to the bottle in her hand. "I lost my brother. We were twins." Lost implied that Wanda knew what happened but right now she didn't. All she knew was that he wasn't here and she needed him.

He wouldn't leave her side for this long, not without a reason. It bothered Wanda but she couldn't put her finger on why. All she felt was the memory of a sharp pain in her chest.

"How do you keep going?"

"Put one foot in front of the other like it doesn't matter. It does, of course. Everything you do feels a little hollow and the world just seems a little more gray," Raleigh says. This, he knows from experience. He doesn't know what it feels like to lose a twin but he knows what it feels like to lose a brother and he and Yancy had been as close as brothers could be without sharing a womb. He doesn't know how he got past those early days, only that he had, and he wonders when she lost her brother.

"When did it happen? Was it recently?"

"I don't know." Wanda took another swig from her bottle.

She should know what happened to her brother but all she knew was that he was suddenly gone. She was somewhere she didn't recognize that felt both familiar and alien with people claiming to know her. It was as if something important had been stolen from her or a piece of herself had been carved away. It wasn't a feeling that she could explain but she knew that Pietro was dead.

"He isn't here. I don't feel him like I had." She felt as if part of herself was dead. "I just know he's gone." Her accent was thicker than usual, as if she had never left Sokovia.

"He would never leave my side."

Raleigh takes in a soft breath. This is something he has experience with, experience that hits him deep. He knows what it's like to have a brother and to lose him and to feel like part of yourself has been torn away in the process. He doesn't want Wanda to feel that way, not at all.

"Do you...could you tell me about him? So I could get to know him a little, maybe?"

Wanda exhaled a quick huff. "About him?" Her expression softened and her eyes lost focus as she slipped into the warm embrace of her memories.

"He's always been there for me. After-" Her voice caught. "After our parents died. It was just the two of us and he used to say that we should look out for each other because no one else would. He said that the world was unfair but it didn't matter because we were going to fight back and we'd always have each other." She didn't talk about her brother often but it was obvious that she loved him. "We're twins. He was born a few minutes before me but he never let me forget it. He always wanted to act like the older brother and protect me."

Her voice trailed off as her gaze refocused on the roof top and the empty village that stretched beneath them. It looked so much like Sokovia but she knew that it wasn't home. Home was where her brother was.

"My brother was older too," Raleigh says after a few moments. He hasn't talked much about his brother to anyone other than Peggy and Sansa but he finds that it comes easily with Wanda.

"We weren't twins, though, so we were a few years apart. Sometimes, though, we felt close like that. We could just...get in each others' heads in a way that nobody else could. When he died, I felt like I lost part of myself. It's like losing an arm or a leg."

"Yeah." That was exactly how it felt.

It felt like someone had plunged a fist into her chest and ripped out her heart. Furry, confusion and anger replaced what was once filled by comfort and love. Wanda didn't know what she would do if he was gone.

She took another long sip of her drink, hoping that the alcohol might numb the pain in her chest. "It doesn't get easier." She didn't know from personal experience, not yet, but Wanda had a feeling that this pain would remain open and pained for a long time.

"No. But you learn to live with it," Raleigh says. There's no point in glossing it over for her. If he could honestly say that he could ease the pain of losing Yancy somehow, he owed it to this girl to tell her how so she could put her love for her brother aside and move on. Thing is, there's no way to do it. You learn how to work around it, to minimize it so you get through a day but it's always there. It's always, always there.

"You wanna come down? We can talk about it more, if you need to."

Wanda looked over at Raleigh. "And go where?" She had no memory of the village and those who lived in it. All she knew was the things that she had lost and the empty feeling that lingered in her chest. She didn't feel like she belonged anywhere.

"I have no where to go."

She looked back at her bottle, noticing that it was now almost empty.

"Well, we could go for a walk. There's woods, there's the river," Raleigh suggests. "I just want to help, if I can. I know what you're going through and I can't pretend that it's going to be okay because it isn't. I owe it to you not to lie about that. Still, though, if I can help talk you through it I want to. I want to do what I can."

He hopes she takes him up on the offer.

Wanda turned and looked out from her perch on the roof towards the bits and pieces of the village that she could see. The world was covered in white and for a few seconds she forgot how dark and awful of a place it could be. Her gaze lingered before she turned back towards Raleigh and nodded her head.

"Sure." She didn't care where they walked but they could go somewhere.

Wanda pressed her palm against the roof and carefully pushed herself to her feet. She was feeling a little drunk but not enough to make it too difficult to get off the roof.

"It's pretty here when it snows, isn't it?" Raleigh's always liked the snow. He had grown up in Germany when snow had been a common thing in the winter and when he'd been stationed in Japan, he'd seen a little there. Anchorage had more than enough snow to go around. He's always associated snow with happier times in his life and happier memories. He wonders what memories Wanda attaches to it.

"I've always liked the world when a fresh snow falls. It feels like starting over."

Snow was very common in Sokovia. It was common to have a light layer of white dusting the houses and streets for over half of the calendar year. This place... reminded her so much of Sokovia but she knew that it wasn't home.

"It is." She agreed in a soft voice, her chin tilting up as she watched the lazy drifting of the snow. "Do you think that snow will do that?" She loved the snow but it was always a cold presence in her life. Making it threw winters when you were homeless could be difficult and Wanda wondered if she would have been able to survive without her brother there.

"I think so. I think if you want it to, it will," Raleigh says. He hates to see anyone sad but the sheer anguish he can see on Wanda's face and hear in her words as she talks about her brother is something he recognizes all too well. He wishes he could take that on himself, considering he knows all too well what it's like to lose a brother that's closer to you than anyone else in the world.

"I've talked to some people around here. They say that the dead can come here. Sansa, my girlfriend? Her brother is dead and he's here - just like he was the last time she saw him. It's a little bit of hope, anyway."

Wanda wasn't sure if she wanted hope but she was thankful nonetheless. She knew what Raleigh was trying to do and she didn't think she deserved that sort of kindness. "Maybe." Her voice was thick but she had managed to keep her reply even and short.

"Tell me about your memories of the snow." It wasn't a question but Wanda pronounced it like it was. "Did you play outside?"

"Oh, yeah. Even as an adult stationed up in Anchorage, we'd blow off steam having snowball fights. You ever do that? Duck and cover, try to see if you could get someone more than they got you? My brother was a hell of an arm when it came to snowballs."

Raleigh remembers getting more than one to the face. "Our base commander let it happen. Sometimes you need to goof around even if you're in the military."

Wanda nodded her head absently as they twisted their way around the winter wonderland. "Yeah. My brother and I would. He was always faster than me but I had better aim." It was speed versus accuracy and her brother often sacrificed accuracy in order to be faster. It wasn't until after the experiments with Hydra that he had managed to master both and by that time they had stopped having snowball fights.

"It was when we were younger. Before all the fighting happened." After losing their parents it was about serving and fighting against those who wanted to oppress and hurt the innocent people of Sokovia. It didn't feel like they had time for that kind of fun though Wanda and her brother never stopped laughing a smiling.

As long as they had each other, they could be happy.

"War is messy shit. My world's been at war since I was about fifteen or so. I don't think I can remember a time we weren't, really, and I think that's sad. This place is...it's weird but it's peaceful, in a way. The things we're worried about here are different from the things I'm worried about at home."

Here, the threats seem to be smaller and easier contained. Raleigh can deal with those things for the most part. He has no idea what he'd do if a kaiju ended up here and he's just glad the lake doesn't seem to be a big enough body of water to harbor one.

"My home has always been at war. I wasn't dragged into it until I was ten." There was no avoiding where her life went after the loss of her parents. She had grown up on the streets, with only her brother to look out for her.

Wanda looked down at the snow, listening to the way it crunched beneath her boots. It was comforting but also very sad.

"We should go back to the inn." She paused. "It's cold."

Raleigh gives her a soft smile and nods after a moment. It's cold now and they've been outside a lot longer than anyone ought to be in weather like this, even if both of them are pretty used to the cold.

"Yeah, let's walk back. Maybe we can get what passes for coffee or tea and plan how we're going to take out the rest of the village in a tactical snowball assault. We're probably going to be the best at it," he says, trying to get a smile out of her.

A bit of a smile pulled over Wanda's lips. "Yeah. We'd come out on top of that." She couldn't help but smile. She thought of her brother but of all the happy times that they had had together.

Whatever else might come next. She didn't want to forget those times.

"Thank you."

[ooc: end?]

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008 Who are you? [OPEN]

22 November

Re: 22 November

22 November

Re: 22 November

22 November - new journal

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