sixthiterationlogs | 004 Unhappy changes [OPEN]

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004 Unhappy changes [OPEN]

WHO: Wanda Maximoff
WHERE: Home/Inn/Woods
WHEN: May 1st - 8th
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: None yet
STATUS: OPEN

Home - May 1st – Early Morning

It wasn’t unusual for Wanda to be woken by her nightmares. They came more readily here than they had at home, playing over every loss and uncertainty like a Scooby Doo rerun on TV. Lately her dreams have been about her brother and more often than not she’d find herself jolting awake by slinging a ball of red sparks across the room. This morning brought no damage to her surroundings. Her heart pounded frantically in her chest while sweat matted her long dark hair to her neck and shoulders.

She was quick to get dressed, pulling on her jeans and the white tank top that she’d been given on her arrival. The house was warm though she could feel the morning chill creeping like thin tendrils through the air. With a heavy sign Wanda kicked open the door to her room and headed down stairs to see how much of the night’s fire was still burning in the hearth. Her fingers laced through her hair pulling the brown silky strands back from her face. When she reached the living room Wanda extended her fingertips out towards the far side of the room, willing her powers to move a log onto the fire.

Nothing happened.

She called for her abilities again but nothing happened. "Move." She kept her hand pointed towards the far side of the room, her voice harsh as she glared at the stack of logs. "MOVE!" Wanda shouted as she quickly stepped towards the small stack of logs, kicking the one she’d been commanding halfway across the room. The log thumped loudly against the floor. She wanted to scream at the piece of wood but what little self-control she had stopped her.

Woods/Around - May 1st - All Day

Eventually Wanda left her house. Tension was set in her shoulders as she walked straight for the forests edge. She didn’t want to believe that her powers were gone, that there was now nothing she could do. She was helpless, defenseless. She couldn’t protect anyone.

She’d had her powers for so long; she didn’t know how to handle them being gone.

When she reached the trees she shouted, listening to her pained cry carry over the canopy. She kicked at the trees around her, her boots stopping with every solid object that she’d come into contact with. Rage, pain, fear, frustration and hate mingled in her chest as she lashed out at everything around her. She threw a fist into the tree, feeling the rough texture of the bark scrape and bruise her knuckles. Again and again she hit the trunk of the tree, wishing she could push all of her feelings away.

When she returned her town her knuckles were bloody and brushed, her hair matted to her neck where a thin layer of sweat covered her skin. She looked tired and worn out, having managed to release the bulk her frustration in the woods.

Inn/Around - May 2nd - 8th - Brooding

Wanda could be found in many places throughout the village. She was determined to prove that being without her powers didn’t change anything. She knew it did but it was the only way she could fight the frustration that knotted and grew uncomfortably in her chest.

Early in the morning Wanda would split wood for her home, occasionally kicking a piece of timber that wouldn’t split properly. She helped Kate preserve the meat at the inn; this never required the use of her abilities and was now one of Wanda’s favorite tasks. While every other after noon she could be found cooking at the inn, using the few spices that she knew and testing the ones she didn’t. Wanda wasn’t sure when the last time she ate was. She remembered making food but not eating it.

In the evenings Wanda dreaded to return home. It was when she was trying to sleep, alone in her room that she’d lose herself to her thoughts and her doubt. It was stupid. She knew that but so many things were changing and there was nothing she could do to stop it. A distraction, all she needed was a distraction.

She could usually be found sitting at a random table in the common area. There was a button on the table in front of her; sometimes she’d spin it on its side with her finger while other times she’d just stare at it, expecting something to happen. Towards the beginning of the month she’d search for any abandoned liquor from the feast, welcoming the dizzying sensation that it brought with it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Please, don't mention it," Peggy promises, because she wants to be any help that she can be. "I know that we're not exactly close, but I'd like to think that perhaps we could be. I find myself needing to start all over and make new friends, it's nice to think that I could learn a little more about people who knew Steve."

"It means I already know that you're a good person, because he's got impeccable taste," she jokes.

"Yeah."

Wanda felt herself smile despite the sinking feeling in her chest. "I don't know about that." She commented fondly. Those who were close to Steve couldn't help but both love and hate the man. "He is always able to see the good in people."

She never expected Steve to understand her situation but he tried and that's what counted.

"He's the best man I've ever known," Peggy admits, which is hard for her to talk about, especially when he's not here. "Once I'd lost him, I tried to live my life in a way that could answer the question, 'would Steve do this', and I'm not sure I was able to, recently." Her life is far more filled with shades of grey than she'd like.

Certainly, with the SSR, she'd become someone that didn't live up to Steve's heights. "At the same time, he wasn't there," she says, bottling up the heartbreak. "So I don't suppose I owe him anything, do I?"

Wanda rolled her shoulders. She was sure that there was only one Steve for a reason. "Sometimes I think Steve over simplifies, other times I think we need that. It depends." He needed a balance in Wanda's mind but her own negativity balanced out his advice decently well.

She looked up at Peggy, her expression growing more sober. "He didn't want to." She replied, her voice thick. "He didn't talk about it but he visited you at the hospital often. It hurt him." Wanda felt the words, he loved you balance on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't say it. That was something for Steve to say.

"You inspired him as much as he inspired you."

She hates to think about this future that's coming from her. If she leaves her, isn't that what's waiting? Steve, out of the ice, but far too late for them to have the life together that she had wanted. Even after she'd put him in the past, his resurrection here had unearthed old feelings and made it hard for her to put them away again.

"I heard that I'm not alive, there, not anymore," she says quietly. "I don't like to think about what that's done to Steve, because I know what it did to me. Still, I'm glad he has friends. I didn't have many, after I lost him. Circumstances and life changed, not for the better."

"You recently passed away." Wanda confirmed softly. "I think you gave Steve the strength to disobey the accords." She didn't know for sure. She didn't ask Steve but he was going against Tony, against Natasha and Vision. Wanda had no doubt where Steve's strength to face his friends came from.

"I'm sorry." She paused looking a bit younger than she normally did. "You have friends here." It wasn't forever but Wanda considered Peggy a friend.

Peggy knows that she couldn't have lived forever, but she also wishes that they could have found Steve in the ice sooner. Maybe they could have had some sort of shot at closure, even if their lives had diverted so much. Here, though, she's back to the crossroads. There's no Steve, but there's no Daniel either, and she needs to decide what direction to take her life towards.

"I know," Peggy promises. "What accords?" she asks, because while she's heard a great deal of the future, this is the first she's heard of something like that.

It was easy for Wanda to understand the complications when standing at a crossroad. You have all the power to choose where your life goes and yet so much of what happens was out of you control. You begin to wonder which direction was the best way to go and realize that there was no way of truly knowing.

Wanda continued to pick at the button, her lips rolling together before she spoke. "It’s complicated." She exhaled slowly. She hadn’t gotten a chance to really talk about… anything since she arrived. This was her chance and Wanda wanted to take it. Peggy wasn’t just someone Steve knew and trusted; she was someone that Wanda knew and was learning to trust. "We were hunting down a terrorist; me, Steve, Sam and Natasha." Wanda licked her lips and continued. "They had stolen a virus that was similar to the black plague and were going to sell it on the black market. In our attempts to stop them…" Her voice trailed off and Wanda exhaled. It was clear that this wasn’t the easiest thing to talk about.

"There was a bomb. I surrounded it with my power and tried to get it up in the air. I wasn’t fast enough." There was a short pause before Wanda continued. "It hit the building next to us. Many people died. Due to the accident the accords were designed. They thought the Avengers too powerful and they wanted the world’s governments to control that power. The accords were to be signed by everyone in the Avengers. Steve refused. He said that governments were only after their own gain."

Wanda didn’t know what was best but she didn’t want to be viewed and used as a weapon.

It's strange, hearing about these missions that people she's come to care about so dearly have been on. With Steve leading them, Peggy can't help but wonder what they might have done if Steve hadn't gone down on the Valkyrie the way he had. She swallows back that regret, since this isn't the time for it.

Instead, Peggy listens as attentively as she can to Wanda. She can understand why Steve reacted the way he did, knowing that she would have likely thought the same. The government had turned Steve into a performing monkey, had kept his blood, had taken her worth and reduced it to nothing.

"I can't imagine that went over very well," Peggy says calmly, though a part of her is so very proud of Steve for it.

"It didn't." Wanda went back to playing with the button. She didn't know why the small piece of plastic fascinated her so much but she couldn't bring herself to put it down or away. It helped her think, as if turning the round object locked her thoughts firmly into place.

"The Avengers were dividing. Those of us who followed Steve and those who followed Tony and the accords." Her tongue drags over her lips. "Tony carries a lot of guilt." She did too but Wanda was significantly more comfortable talking about others.

"I can understand but it's sad to see."

The trouble with this whole situation is that Peggy can already feel herself bristling, wanting to solve the problem. If Tony is anything like his father (and from his time in the village, Peggy suspected that he was), she would have simply grabbed Steve by the shirt, Tony by the ear, and locked them all in a room until they reached a solution.

"Guilt about what?" Peggy asks, because while she might have spoken with him a great deal, personal topics always seemed evaded.

Being locked in a room would probably do Tony and Steve some good but Wanda feared that their conflict would devolve into fight and then getting others involved in their fight. In a way, that's exactly what happened.

"My home." She replied in a soft breath. She had to put down the button for this. "Before I joined the Avengers my brother and I were with Hydra. The Avengers stopped that location but Tony... he created a machine wanting to use the same artifact that gave me and my brother power. That machine was called Ultron." Wanda frowned and looked down at the button. She didn't feel right about her own actions through this but she couldn't do anything about that now.

"At first, my brother and I joined Ultron. Then we found out what he really wanted to do. He didn't want peace but to control humans. He thought that the answer was there. Ultron killed a lot of people in the fight to stop him." Her throat constricted.

"Tony carries every death with him." She quickly finished before quieting. She couldn't help but think of her brother and how badly she missed him.

Peggy's holding her breath the whole time, wondering how Tony could be so very much like Howard, in all the heartbreaking ways of it. "His father was like that," she says. "Howard never could let Steve go, nor the guilt of all the inventions that went wrong." He was able to subdue it, at times, but Peggy had seen him in those dark times when he couldn't fight it.

Poor Tony, though she also wishes that she could have been there to insist that a machine using alien technology was not bound to go well. "It's the mark of a good heart," she says. "Unfortunately, it's also easy to damage."

Wanda lifted her shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. "Like father like son. Tony will never forgive himself." It was something that Wanda knew after seeing Tony's fears. "And in order to protect people, he's very likely to make the same mistake again." Tony was very smart and it was his strength as much as it was his downfall.

"Is it?" She asked, genuinely curious. She'd felt guilt but she'd never consider herself of having a good heart.

"Does he not have the support of others?" Peggy has to wonder, because that had been how she and Jarvis had kept Howard in line. Endless, insufferable work just to make sure the man didn't do anything too stupid, but it worked for them. "Someone to tell him when he's making mistakes? When he should ask for help instead of try to solve everything?"

"People who don't care anymore, they don't feel guilt. They make their mistakes," she says, "but then they never reflect on why they did or whom they may have hurt."

"He does but Tony is stubborn and doesn't always take it." She didn't know all of the details of Tony's life, she only knew what he was like as a person. "I think that's what Steve is trying to tell him." Only they weren't exactly listening to each other. The image of the boy he'd shown them pushed itself to the forefront of Wanda's thoughts and she frowned.

"You're right." Wanda didn't sound sure but she'd think about it and in the end, she'd know that Peggy was right. She found it difficult to think of herself in that light or Tony but she wanted to try.

Steve made this sort of thing look easy; running in head first, without any doubt in what he's doing.

"Starks are a stubborn creature," Peggy says with a heavy sigh, wishing that Howard had been easier to get through to. After all, she hadn't been able to stop him from creating some of his worse inventions and there's blood on her hands because of it. "Tony doesn't have any children, does he?" She wonders if there's going to be another generation for her to worry about in the abstract.

"He knew me," she says, "when I was here, he knew me, called me Aunt Peggy, like I was in his life. Yet, how could he feel he didn't have my support, even before I passed on?"

Wanda shook her head. "No, he doesn't." She hadn't wanted to ask Tony about Pepper, not since the red head had stopped coming around the Avengers compound. Wanda knew who came and went but she tried not to put herself in other peoples business.

"I didn't know he was here." She picked the button back up again but this time she slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.

Wanda paused for a moment. "What should I call you? I know you as Peggy to Steve and Agent Carter." From her file and records.

"For a brief time," Peggy says, with a touch of sadness in her voice. She would have liked to get to know him better, but unfortunately, it wasn't to be. Just as Jarvis had once accused her, it seemed as though Peggy always lost the people in her life, a curse which has followed her here.

"Peggy is fine," she promises, seeing as she has no real preference beyond the irritation that arises every time Thompson calls her 'Marge' and the distant bitterness of her mother's insistent 'Margaret'. "And you're all right if I call you Wanda, I hope? It's what I have been using," she admits.

Wanda nodded her head. "Yeah." She offered Peggy a small forced smile. "Sorry." It felt right to apologize. Wanda understood the sting of loss, it never got easier. She couldn't even assure Peggy that she won't vanish.

"Do a lot of people here come and go?" Like her brother had?

"Enough that it makes me wonder if there is some form of escape and we're just not finding it," she says, which means that she feels like she's somehow failing. If she were better, then she would be back in Los Angeles. The trouble is that every once in a while, someone comes here that makes her rethink her will to leave.

"Perhaps there's something we don't understand," she says. "Maybe they're all still here and we haven't searched long enough." If that's the case, she thinks that her guilt will consume her, if she's left Steve out there twice.

Wanda shook her head. "I don't know." She honestly though that the second theory was more likely. She didn't think that people simply escaped from this place. It was all somehow planned.

"I think we're test subjects. If someone isn't useful anymore it'd stand to reason they'd be forced to leave." She looked over at Peggy. "I haven't found a pattern." Wanda didn't want Peggy to think that she'd failed. This world wasn't fair and it wasn't any one persons fault though she imagined that time made it easy to shift blame towards yourself.

"I don't know that I want to keep being useful, then," is her bitter remark, seeing as the last thing she wants is to continue to linger here without any purpose, seeing as it's a frustrating thing to have one's agency stripped from you. She's had it happen twice now, as the first time had been after the war, and it's no better now. "I search all the time, but nothing is ever there, not until it suddenly appears out of nowhere."

"It feels as if we're being taunted," she notes with disgust. "This new affront is just like all the rest."

Wanda couldn't help but agree and yet it felt like there was very little they could do. She hated that feeling. Wanda was many things but helpless wasn't one of them. She'd keep fighting, no matter how long it took.

"I'll find a way." Her words dripped with bitter distaste. Wanda's hate ran deeply and it was as much a part of her as her brother was. She'd find a weakness and when she did, she'd tear them apart and make them feel the way she's felt.

"If you need some muscle backing you up, you know I'm only a shout away," she says, utterly serious about this even though it might sound like a joke. She feels at her best when she's able to simply use brute force in order to make something happen, even though she's well used to putting her mind to work. It just doesn't have the same satisfactory feeling after.

"Is there anything that I can do, now?" Peggy offers. "Perhaps something that you know will cheer you up?"

004 Unhappy changes [OPEN]

Home - May 1st – Early Morning

Woods/Around - May 1st - All Day

Inn/Around - May 2nd - 8th - Brooding

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