sixthiterationlogs | 004 - Hellos [CLOSED]

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004 - Hellos [CLOSED]

WHO: Wanda Maximoff
WHERE: At the Inn
WHEN: Around Now-Ish.
OPEN TO: Foggy Nelson
WARNINGS: N/A

Wanda couldn't remember the last time she had a good night's sleep. Her thoughts had been racing since she saw the brief glimpse of her future and she didn't know what to make of it all. She found a place towards the back of the inn, just after finishing her task of preserving meat. She's sitting in a pair of green cargo pants and a tank top, her hair falling over her shoulders in thick brown waves. A wooden post was pressed between her shoulder blades and her legs sprawled over the floor while the old ukulele sat in her lap.

She knew how to play a few songs on the guitar but the notes were transferable. It helped her clear her thoughts and she hoped that playing might magically help now.

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of Colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night

Wanda plucked the last few cords and then looked up when she spotted someone new. She didn't know Foggy but he looked like a reasonably nice person. "I wasn't bothering you was I?"

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The music drew his attention.

He hasn't heard music since he got here. He hadn't realised how pervasive noise and music was in New York until there was none.

"No, it was nice. It's feels like too long since I heard music. New York's so noisy and then here... I actually miss sirens, you know." He offers her a smile and a hand to shake. "Franklin Nelson."

Wanda smiled back at him and met his hand with her own. "Wanda Maximoff." Her accent was thicker when she wasn't singing, rounding and pulling at each syllable. "It's nice to meet you." She didn't recognize his name but she enjoyed meeting new people.

"How long have you been here?"

Her fingers idly plucked at the instruments strings but she wasn't really playing anything.

He shakes her hand firmly, not recognising the accent, except that she sounds like she's form maybe Eastern Europe. "About... two weeks now? I landed on my feet, I have friends here, and people who aren't friends, but know me, so I've been well looked after."

He gestures next to her, a silent query if he can sit and join her. "How about you?"

Wanda nodded and scooted over a bit. There was plenty of room without scooting but she wanted to let him know that he was more than welcome to join her. She usually took up space at the inn because she enjoyed the company. If she wanted to be alone then she would have been in a less traveled area of the village.

"Two years." It didn't feel like it'd been that long but Wanda had been counting from when she had first arrived which had been two winters ago. "About. I had disappeared for about three months but I don't know what happened during that time." She felt older but not much wiser.

"It's been a long time." Her fingers strummed down the strings and played a soft cord. "I'm glad to know there are people you know here. It's the same for me though memories don't always line up."

He sat himself down, not too close, but closer than maybe some people. New Yorkers didn't have the greatest personal boundaries or personal space.

"That's... honestly, that sounds really terrible. This place isn't really somewhere anyone would choose to live, I think." Well, maybe some people would. "I'm already missing the city, missing my work, my family, my girlfriend..." He glanced to her. "Yeah. My memories aren't the same as theirs. Or rather, they both remember more than me. About three months more?"

Wanda nodded her head. "I've seen years differences." She paused and curled her lips inward. "I don't hate it here but I've always avoided learning about my future." A cold drop of ice sank in her stomach as she remembered the video that she'd seen. It wasn't just death she faced but something worse...

She mentally shook the thought away and focused.

"It gets easier but you'll never stop missing those who aren't here." Her fingers pluck at the strings again. "It's why I do thinks like this. It helps me think and I play songs that I remember from home."

"I haven't heard music since I got here."

Music was so much part of life, the absence of it was jarring. "If I was musically inclined, I'd probably do something about it, but I don't want the first lynching to be me because of my butchery of good sound."

He didn't want to think about missing Marci and his family. "How does it get easier? Sort of like... grieving? Eventually, you start to forget the sharp, cutting edges of the pain?"

Wanda's mouth curved into a warm smile. "That's why I was happy to get this. Clint taught me a few songs. All Beatles and Eagles songs." She propped the ukulele up on her thigh and plucked a few more notes. "I was never good at playing but I've had time here." She knew the guitar but she hadn't seen any of those in the village.

She shook her head as she let her fingers play the rest of Hotel California.

"You don't stop missing them but the pain lessens and the memories become fonder." She wanted to tell him that time flowed differently here and that no one would know that they were gone but Wanda wondered if they were really gone or if it was something more simple than that.

It wasn't a happy thought.

"Are you worried?"

"Worried? Sort of, but not about the people back home." He knows even if time passes, Marci will be fine without him. And if he's actually a clone, then there's nothing for her to miss.

"I just miss my girlfriend. I hadn't realised how much I would miss her if she wasn't there." How much he'd come to rely on her to talk to about things. "Back home, my best friend was missing presumed dead. I don't think it had been long enough to reach the stage of fond memories."

Wanda listened, her fingers gently strumming over the tight strings of the ukulele. The tune shifted from notes she wasn't sure of to a sweet lullaby she'd memorized when she'd first picked up the guitar. She begins repeating the song as their conversation continues, keeping the music soft and light, like a backdrop the conversation.

"You say that like there is more to it." She glanced down at her fingers and then back at Foggy. "Your friend, are they here?"

Wanda had experienced stranger things and would easily believe that this place could bring the dead back to life.

Foggy nodded, silent for a long moment.

"He's not dead at home either. He told me when I met him here. He's just... not told me he survived." He didn't know how he would take it back home. If he would be happy, exhausted, relieved, furious... Or just sort of numb with too much emotion.

"I really like your playing."

"Things like that make it complicated." Wanda admitted with a small smile. "Back home, I'm on the run. I was broken out of prison and I've heard stories about my future but there are a lot of people who don't know where I am or what's happened. It makes things complicated."

She plucked another note and then slowed, her smile growing more bashful.

"I don't play very well but thank you." Pale green eyes glanced up towards Foggy. "Is there a song you like? I might not play it well but I can try."

"I haven't heard much. Karen and Matt are both from a few months ahead of me but... aside from knowing Matt's alive, neither of them have told me much else." Which he's actually okay with, weirdly.

"Well, I like it. And no, I like you playing what you feel like, because it has more feeling in it."

Wanda's expression lightened as her fingers once against strummed the small instrument. "Is that so?" She played a few quick notes before falling into the same rhythm she'd been playing. "Thank you."

She liked playing, even if it didn't really solve any of her problems.

"I like it better that way." She pause briefly before continuing. "Not knowing the future. I always thought I'd get there eventually." Though Wanda also knew that her future wasn't going to be a happy one. Jail and then... killing someone she cared about? She didn't have the context to understand but it hurt when she thought back to that small scene she'd experience.

There was nothing they could do about it here.

"Someone said they thought we're all clones anyway. That, back home, the original Franklin is still living his life, unaware of this and me and everything."

It should bother him more than it did. But really, compared to everything else, it felt like something he could emotionally handle.

"Yes. I have heard that too." Wanda didn't know what she thought of that but after everything she'd learned, it was the simplest explanation and likely the most correct. "I'm not sure how I feel about it." Her expression shifted to something more thoughtful. "I'm still me and I still feel like I made those choices."

Her fingers came to a stop and she rested the ukulele on her lap.

"I learned something about my future but I don't know if I should be upset or not. I don't understand and there isn't anyone here who has the context to help me." Her lips pressed lightly together. "But it still makes me sad to know what's going to happen."

"There's this movie. Dark City. Which is sort of about who and what we are. If we're our memories, or something less defined, less definable. But memories make us the people we are, I think. The experiences we have, which are kept in those memories. I'm as much Franklin Nelson as anyone else with these memories."

It's enough for him.

"And knowing that? You should trust that if that happens, big if, and if you are the individual to experience them, you have your reasons and they make sense to you."

It sounded fantastic in theory but it still left a little hole in Wanda's chest. "By that logic, I'm not the Wanda Maximoff from home. I've been here too long and those experiences and memories have changed me." She doubted that she'd be recognized as the same young woman who had joined the Avengers all those years ago.

She didn't feel like the same person.

"But-" Her mouth twitched into a light smile. "Maybe that's a good thing too. I've gotten stronger here." In ways that she hadn't really expected.

"You're not Wanda from home. You can't be. You're Wanda from home with more experiences on top of that. Every morning we're born someone new and that person dies each night when we sleep, only to be born again. We can, if we choose, be a phoenix of ourselves every day."

It's surprisingly poetic, even for Foggy, but maybe the music is bringing it out of him.

She smiled and for the first time in months, she felt a little bit better. She still missed Clint and felt his absents in the village but she was going to go on being herself, like she always did.

"Thanks. It's actually nice to hear that." Also to hear someone with such a chipper attitude. "Are you sure you don't have a request? I think you've earned it."

"Nah. All the songs I can think of will just make me think of people who I don't have anymore. Or are probably too obscure." And he doesn't need to be thinking of the past right now. "How about, the next person who makes a request, you play for them. For me."

Wanda laughed, the sound low and warm. "Okay. I'll do that." She wanted to show him how thankful she was to have run into him. Wanda has met a lot of people here but no one has made as much sense as Foggy. It was nice to have someone to help ground her since Clint's disappearance.

"If you need help with anything. Let me know." Her fingers skillfully flicked over the tight cords of the ukulele. "I feel like I owe you."

"Nah, you don't owe me anything. I'm a lawyer, trust me, I'm very good at working out who owes what to whom." He gives her another warm smile.

"Good to know." Her fingers strummed again. Wanda didn't know what she was playing but she began to fall into another song originally written by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was only the chorus because Wanda didn't know the whole song but it was catchy.

There were things that she needed to short out but Wanda felt like she was on a more firm path now. She'd made up her mind and now she just needed to stick to it.

"I've met a few politicians, not many layers." She glanced up at Foggy with a small smile. "You seem too nice."

Foggy starts to hum along without thinking, because he knows this song. This song was part of his growing up. "Personally, I am too nice. Way too nice. Fatal character flaw. Professionally? Not the same. I'm fighting for other people. It's easier if you like them and understand their reasons, but regardless, it's what I signed up for. The system cannot work if people don't get fair defence."

"I can understand that." Wanda continued to play the notes of the song, trying to figure out the parts that she'd forgotten through playing. "It's easier to be strong when someone is relying on you."

She glanced up at him before shifting her gaze back down to her fingers. "I used to fight for others." Wanda paused and then added. "Not that I don't know but it's a little different here."

"Yeah, it is." It's what's keeping him together right now. He needs to keep it together and get Matt mobile and confident with coming and going.

"Different sort of fight." Different things.

"Yeah." Wanda looked out the window of the inn and noticed the stark darkness of the evening fading into night. She exhaled a tired breath and shook her head. "I should go. I have a dog at home that'll whine if I'm late."

She met Foggy with a warm smile. "It was nice to meet you. I hope we can talk more soon."

"Pets are demanding things," Foggy agrees absently. "Go, look after your dog. We'll catch up again soon, I have no doubt. This place doesn't have that many people in it."

"They can be. Arado was given to me when a good friend disappeared. I think he's worried that I'll do the same." The dog had been in the village longer than most of its people and has experienced two previous owners disappearing. Wanda understood the nervous sensation and generally allowed Arado to follow her around. She had insisted he stayed home after hurting his paw but he wouldn't stay down for long.

"I'll see you soon. I'm sure."

Wanda rose to her feet, her mouth curving into a warm smile. She kept the ukulele in her hand and headed towards the inn's door.

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004 - Hellos [CLOSED]

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