#december banditnanza 2023 fic

[aparticularbandit]

Making Cookies

Summary: Peeta tells Katniss he needs to talk, but they end up baking instead.

Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mallark

Rating: T.

AO3

“We should talk.”

Peeta’s stern, more stern than normal, but it’s better than the stilted formality that’s grown between us ever since the games.

But I don’t want to talk to Peeta.  I don’t know how to talk to Peeta anymore, if I ever did to begin with.  It doesn’t seem fair to keep up the ruse he’d created, and there’s no way to return to what we’d been before.  We hadn’t been anything before.  Just the boy with the bread and the girl he’d saved, a tentative past connection that meant everything and nothing.

But it isn’t just Peeta.  It’s impossible to return to anything the way it was before the games.  Other than Haymitch, he’s the only one who understands that.

Maybe that’s what makes this so hard.

I give him a silent nod.  It isn’t as though much else fills my days, and it isn’t though I have any excuse not to meet with him, other than simply not wanting to do so.  My eyes shift about me, taking in the empty houses around us, my own barely used with my mother and Prim, and Haymitch’s.  Sometimes, I envy his loneliness.  I do not envy his nightmares; I have my own.

“When?”

~

Peeta’s house smells strongly of bread.  It’s the same way he smells, but stronger; in the Capitol, during the games, that smell was gone, replaced with their fancy oils and powders then with dirt and blood.  By the end, he smelled like one of the rabbits Gale traps in the woods.  They have more time to be afraid.

Even now, away from the bakery, Peeta’s house smells like bread.  He bakes the way I hunt, to keep his mind off of everything else.  But no matter how much we try to go back, we can’t.  There will always be a difference between us and everyone else.  A different kind of surviving.  The scent is even stronger inside the house, overwhelming flour mixed with the sweeter scent of sugar and the sharp alcoholic tang of yeast.

I find him waiting for me in the kitchen, apron tied about his waist, flour decorating his hair like snow that doesn’t melt. “You wanted to talk?”

“Mm.  Hold on.  I’m almost done.”  Peeta pushes his hair back with one hand, leaving a trail of flour behind.  Then he sets his newest loaf on a tray, sticks it into the oven where it will be seared with fire, and leaves it be.  He offers me a smile.  “Needed a break.”

“I know.”  I sit on the stool across from him.  “You’ve got flour—”

“Everywhere.  I know.”  Peeta chuckles.  It’s a real laugh, even though it isn’t much, and the smile he wears when he makes it feels normal.  Like the way he’s supposed to be.  He lifts his apron and rubs his face with it.  “Better?”

Now there’s just as much flour on his face as there is on the counter.  “No,” I say.  “Worse.”

“Huh.”  Peeta looks confused.  He stares at his apron.  “That was supposed to help.”  He sighs and looks up at me.  “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to make you match.”

I barely get my mouth open before Peeta throws a spray of flour at me.  It coats my face, thick like the powder they force me to wear in the Capitol, and my mouth drops open as a little cloud puffs around me.  I reach over and push him.  “Hey!”

Peeta stands back, out of the way, and he smiles like he does when he’s happy, not the fake sort of thing he wears when we need to pretend for our safety.  “Now you don’t have an excuse.”

“An excuse?”

“Everything’s been so tense lately,” Peeta says, placing his hands flat on the flour-covered counter.  His smile fades as he looks down at them.  “You can’t teach me how to hunt, but I thought….”  He glances up and searches my eyes.  “I thought I could teach you to bake.  Something simple.”  He pulls a few shaped cutters from a nearby tray.  “Like cookies?”

I don’t want to stay here.  I don’t want to learn how to bake from Peeta, almost as much as I don’t want to teach him how to hunt.  Our lives are already so hopelessly entangled that this only makes everything more confusing.  It would be easier to not, easier to go back to my house and wash everything off.

But Prim will ask.  I can ignore my mother, but I can’t ignore Prim.

So I scowl and nod.  “Fine.”  I nod at the shapes.  “But only if we make one that looks like Haymitch.”

Peeta pulls out another cutter, one that looks like a wine bottle.  I don’t ask why he has one that shape or who would ever want a bottle-shaped cookie.  He offers me a smile. “Drinks and all.”

I don’t smile.  “Drinks and all.”

~

Peeta convinces me to make another batch while we wait for the first one to cook, and while we wait for the first batch to cool enough to decorate – I tell him I won’t be good at it, but he won’t let me leave the decorations up to him – he slices the freshly cooled loaf of bread, slathers it with butter, and hands it to me.  I try to tell him I’m not hungry, but he won’t listen.  Despite this, I take the slice and take a bite.

The bread melts in my mouth.  It’s sweet from the butter, a luxury that we have more than enough of now but that still feels like a luxury.  I scarf the rest of the slice down but don’t ask for another.  He smiles, assuring me that he’ll send the rest home with me.  Peeta gives us fresh bread and cookies every day, but it’s still – it’s another luxury.  One we don’t deserve.

It’s while decorating the body-shaped cookies that it happens.

My attempts at recreating Effie with her bright pink hair look nothing like her, just a puff of pink covering the whole of what should be her head.  I scowl at her and grab for another one of Peeta’s intricate decorating tools.  I want to scrape away all of the icing I’ve already laid, but that would be a waste.  Even something as simple as this, I can’t waste food.

I glance over at the cookie Peeta is decorating and stop.

The cookie, burnt a little from something beyond our control, has a much darker color than the other golden cookies we’ve been decorating.  This one, Peeta’s decorated to be a girl instead of a boy, and she looks the spitting image of Rue.

My breath catches in my throat.  “Peeta?”

Peeta doesn’t look up.  He stares at the cookie, continuing to decorate it – continuing to recreate her – as though it’s the only thing in the world.  “I won’t eat her,” he says.

I hadn’t even thought about that.  Eating Rue – biting off her legs, her arms, her head – the idea of it makes me sick to my stomach in a way that eating a fake Haymitch didn’t.  I remember her in those last moments, after she was dead, after I’d surrounded her with flowers, after I sang for her, for an audience I didn’t see and didn’t care about – and still don’t care about, although their investment saved the both of us together – and I stumble backwards.  “What are you doing?”

When Peeta finishes, he holds the cookie gentle in his hands.  “This is the only way I can save them.”

It’s a horrible explanation, and it doesn’t make any sense.  “You aren’t saving anyone—“

But Peeta lifts the carefully decorated Rue cookie.  He takes her to the freezer and sets her inside, where other cookies decorated like each of the other tributes – even Cato, who’d attacked him, who’d been left with us at the last; even Marvel, who’d killed Rue and who I’d—

“You made all of them,” I say, trying not to feel sick.  “All of them.”

“This is the only way I can save them,” Peeta repeats.  He sets Rue inside with the rest of them and then shuts the freezer door.  “I know it’s a waste, but—”

I wrap my arms around him the way I need someone to hold me during my nightmares.  “It’s not a waste.”  I stare at the closed freezer.  “It’s an honor.”

I don’t tell him that I saw myself in the freezer, too, or that I’d noticed how there wasn’t a cookie of him.

~

While Peeta is visiting with his family later, I sneak into his house.  It isn’t hard.  He doesn’t lock his door.  I don’t think I would either, if my mother and Prim didn’t live in my house.  Whatever I have can be stolen; it’ll just be replaced later, and I don’t need any of it, don’t want any of it.

Streaks of flour coat my face like claw marks.

I open the freezer and gently place another tribute inside.  The Peeta I’ve made isn’t beautiful, like the cookies he’s decorated.  It’s misshapen, and one of its legs has a lump in it.  I’m not good at baking.  Prim won’t even eat the other cookies I’ve made.

But this one wasn’t about baking.  It was about this, setting a Peeta to be protected, to be saved, with all of the others he’s made.

~

A few days later, Peeta meets my eyes and gives me a nod.  That’s how I’ve known he’s seen it.

For once, in all of this, I feel warm.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #the hunger games #thg #katniss everdeen #peeta mallark #everlark #katniss x peeta #katniss everdeen x peeta mallark #peeta mallark x katniss #peeta x katniss #one of you prompted this and here you go #i'm sorry i was going to write fluff and then this happened #because i was using catching fire as my base for trying to get voices right #and like #here you go sorry not sorry

[aparticularbandit]

Instigation: Chapter One

Summary: Steve sends Wanda to seek out an old witch he once knew, and eventually, Wanda brings said old witch back to meet her family.

Wanda Maximoff/Agatha Harkness

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

next chapter

Mid-May, 2015.

Wanda stands outside the New York Sanctum.

It’s an impressive building.  Huge.  Gorgeous glass with a shape that might as well be mystical etched into it in shining gold.  The top is a dome, which is even more impressive given its age.  It literally gleams in the sunlight, which is odd, given how many pass it by without even stopping to look.  But, then, they’re probably used to it.  They see it every day.  If she lived here, maybe she would be used to it, too.

But Wanda doesn’t live here.  Even now, she only lives on the outskirts of town, and live is an interesting word.  She has no American citizenship, nothing to say she deserves to be here, nothing to say she can stay if the government—

The government isn’t going to send her away because the Avengers, that superpowered super team, has decided to keep her here.  With them.  It’s the same as before: she becomes immune to government interference because a more powerful political opponent takes her under her wing.  Never mind that these Avengers are apparently good.  She’d thought the same of Hydra.

It’s easy to believe when she wants to believe.

Wanda stands outside the New York Sanctum with a slip of paper in her hands, looks down at the address on the paper, reads it for what feels like the millionth time, looks back up at the Sanctum, squints, and then walks past the Sanctum to the apartment complex next door.  It’s shabby.  Old.  Probably as old as the Sanctum itself, if not older, and probably more expensive to live in, even with what are likely horrible apartments.  She knows a thing or two about those; when they could afford it, she and Pietro lived in plenty.

“You have got to be joking,” Wanda murmurs in her thick accent.  She glances down at the address one more time – and, yes, there’s an apartment number on there, so it’s definitely the apartment complex Steve meant and not the much bigger and more impressive Sanctum.

“When I was a boy,” Steve had said, “there was a woman with power similar to yours who lived here.  We didn’t see her very often; Mom told me to have nothing to do with her.  But every now and again, when she was desperate enough—”

“Sounds like an old fairytale,” Wanda had cut him off.  “I don’t need a cottage witch.  I don’t do magic.”

But Steve insisted Wanda at least go check the place out.  Seventy years might be a long time, but she could still be alive.  She’d be in her nineties, but with her power, he was certain she’d still be around.  Or maybe a new “witch” lived there, someone who took on that woman’s place in society.  Vision looked up the apartment and the records of ownership, finding that whoever lived there in the forties still lived there now.  Wanda chalked that up to rent control and an apartment that got passed down to a son or daughter or gifted to a family friend, and for a while, she adamantly refused to check things out.

Eventually, though, Wanda grew so tired of Steve’s insistence that she agreed to go.  Nat even offered to join her, although Steve’s stories reminded her of so much folklore that it made her uncomfortable, but she told her there was no point.  She wasn’t going to find anyone there and didn’t want anyone else to waste their time going with her.  Now, though, standing in front of the apartment complex, she decided there was one good thing about being here: if she struck out at the apartment, she could always check out the Sanctum next door.

Not that she believes her powers have anything to do with magic.

Wanda walks into the apartment, only to find that it smells of dust and mildew, and walks along the very, very long hallway to a door waiting at the very end, one situated on the side that looks out on the Sanctum.  She checks the number, checks her paper again, and then steels her face before climbing three floors of stairs, all the way to the top of the building.  It doesn’t matter how high up she gets, the Sanctum next door is still taller, and what’s worse is that the smoke that she hadn’t smelled on the first floor seeps into the air on the second and grows stronger with each floor.

Dirty, dank, and disgusting.  Just like the apartments she’d lived in with Pietro.  But that doesn’t make this smell like home.

On the top floor, at the apartment that holds the same space as the one she’d checked previously, Wanda reads the number, reads her paper again, and sighs.  It matches.  Well, then, this is her stop.  She steps forward and knocks on the door twice, not as loud as she could, but not too soft either.

“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any!” comes calling from within.

“I’m not selling anything,” Wanda says, cheeks flushing quickly with frustration.  “A friend of mine sent me to see an….”  She checks the paper again, trying to read Steve’s not so tidy scrawl.  “Agatha Harkness?”

There’s some shuffling inside the apartment before the door cracks open.  “Who wants to know?”

Wanda stares at the woman standing in the doorframe.  “Um.”

See, Wanda wouldn’t have really cared too terribly much about the woman’s appearance in and of itself.  She’s attractive, sure, and there’s something about how wild her dark hair is that makes Wanda want to tangle her fingers in it, to pull her to her, and, in an attempt to tame it, make it excessively worse.  But she can ignore that, she can ignore the woman’s pale skin, she can even ignore the light smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, but what she can’t ignore is that the woman is dressed in a t-shirt that barely makes its way down to her bare thighs because she isn’t wearing any pants.

“Hey, hon.”  The woman’s voice breaks through Wanda’s thoughts.  “My eyes are up here.”

Wanda jumps.  “Sorry, sorry.”  She runs her fingers through her hair and draws her eyes back up, trying not to linger on the woman’s body any longer than she already has, but then she meets her eyes, thinking that will make things easier, and has to stop again.  “Um.”

It honestly is not at all fair, how this woman looks and how she should be wearing more clothes.  This is not her fault.

The woman smirks.  “You’re not so bad yourself, toots.”  She breaks eye contact with Wanda, lets her eyes wander the way Wanda’s already have, and deepens that smug look.  “You wanted something?”

“You’re Agatha Harkness?” Wanda splutters out, refusing to believe it.  Agatha Harkness was an adult when Steve was a child; she’s got to be ninety or a hundred or something like that.  There’s no way this woman – this very attractive woman – is any older than her mid-thirties.  She’s got to be a new resident.  Or a hot daughter or grand-daughter or some sort of extended relative.  This can’t be—

“Who wants to know?” the woman asks, eyes dropping to the paper now held tight in Wanda’s hand like a lifeline.  “You said something about a friend, hon?”

“Uh, right, yes, right.”  Wanda’s accent grows thicker as she grows more flustered, and she mutters in Sokovian under her breath with the assumption that the other woman can’t understand her.  “Steve.  Steve Rogers.  He said his mother used to visit a witch here when he was a child.”  She can’t help but roll her eyes.  “He did not call her a witch, but she sounds like a fairytale to me.”

The woman listens to her words and gives a little nod.  “Steve Rogers,” she echoes.  “You mean that hunk they’re calling Captain America?  Isn’t he a hundred years old?”

Wanda’s gaze shifts away from the woman.  “Eighties.  He’s in his eighties.”  She bites her lower lip.  “I told him she wouldn’t be here anymore, but he was so insistent that she could help me.”

“You got tired of his nagging, hon.  Don’t try to shortchange it.”

“I got tired of his nagging,” Wanda admits.  She glances up.  “But you don’t look to be her, so—”

“Help you with what, doll?” the woman interrupts.  She gives Wanda another onceover, and her smirk returns.  “Don’t tell me you mean this attraction between us.”

Anyone else, and Wanda would grow so frustrated that she would have left without another word.  But this woman….

She’s attractive, and Wanda can’t help it.  She wants to show off.

“With this,” she says, lifting her hand and letting her power out.  It turns the paper she’d been holding to ash, and as she turns her hand, letting the power thread through her fingertips, she lets the ash dump out onto the floor.  For all that the complex smells horribly of smoke, her addition doesn’t hold the same scent.  Then she brings her hand up, that scarlet power still snaking around her fingers.  “He thought his old witch would be able to help with this.”

The woman’s eyes focus on the power, and its light reflects scarlet in her pupils.  Surrounded by her bright blue irises, it seems like there’s a thin ring of deep purple between them.  “What’s your name, hon?”

“Wanda,” she says, drawing her power back and letting her hand drop.  “Wanda Maximoff.”

The woman takes Wanda’s hand in hers and squeezes.  “Agnes Harker.”  Then she tugs on Wanda’s hand and pulls her into the apartment, shutting the door behind her.  “And I can teach you everything you need to know.”

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #instigation with wanda and co #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #steve rogers #natasha romanov #vision mcu #mcu vision #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

Westview Holidays

Summary: Wanda and Agatha exert a great deal of magic for a Westview celebration, and Wanda has an idea on how to cool down afterwards.

Part of The Thrall of Decades collection.

Rating: T.

AO3

“You’re such a baby.”

“Excuse you, hon, I lived through events you can’t even imagine—”

“—and you’re still a baby.”  Wanda looks over just long enough to catch Agatha’s expression – a moment of feigned hurt that pulls at her heart (unfortunately) before Agatha sticks her tongue out at her.

That was what she waiting for.

With a swipe of one hand, Wanda crafts a small metal pole out of thin air just where Agatha’s tongue ends.  Agatha tries to pull her tongue back in, but now, in the cold air, the pole sticks to her tongue and thwacks hard against her lips.

It’s a small thing – conjuring a metal pole – but it’s more complicated to craft it within the scope of their present world, to have it at the right properties related to the cold air around them to get it stuck to Agatha’s tongue in the first place instead of it being created in a more neutral state of being.  It’s tricky to do what Wanda’s just done, and Agatha’s eyes light with approval.  She clicks her tongue, making a sound much more like the snapping of her fingertips, and the pole vanishes.  “Good girl,” she purrs.

Wanda preens, smug.

“You can flirt when you’re done with the decorations,” Sarah calls from her perch near the front of the crowd, hands cupped around her mouth.  Her husband nudges her with one elbow, and she continues.  “No one wants to see that!”  When Agatha shoots her a look, Sarah gives her a lopsided grin.

It’s more progress than Wanda thought was possible when she chose to stay in Westview, not that she’d been quite thinking about that when she decided to stay, and it’s more care than she’d thought anyone who’d undergone her unintentional abuse of the little town might ever even consider giving her, let alone actually give.  To be forgiven and seen—

It’s a small miracle.

Agatha would call it magic.

~

Nearly a year has passed since Wanda returned to Westview for Agatha, since Agatha tested her little witch until she was convinced she was safe, since magic revealed to her the threads it used in tying them both together, threads Wanda hadn’t noticed (or, if she did, didn’t acknowledge) and Agatha hadn’t so much as attempted to untangle.  Lover of magic she may be and still is, but even she can’t undo what magic wants, when it’s adamant about it.  (It isn’t subtle, remember, and it is far more powerful than either witch alone, than even their powers combined, because all of that rests on the gift of magic in the first place.  It would laugh.)

In that year, Wanda allowed Agatha to put constraints on her powers – constraints she could, of course, easily undo without even the wave of her hand.  But Agatha said they were necessary.  Then, when Wanda raised an eyebrow at her words, admitted that, strictly speaking, they weren’t technically necessary but elaborated that the constraint on her power would force her to learn true witchcraft, just as other witches throughout the centuries had.  And while Wanda certainly didn’t need runes or incantations or anything as trivial as that, understanding the theory behind everything, the way magic felt within the hands of even the smallest user, would make her own, much more unwieldy crafting that much stronger.

And, more than strength, it would make it reliable.

Give her greater control.

For a witch who had struggled to understand and control her magic since she’d first gained it, even before she’d known it was magic in the truest sense of the word, Wanda yearned for that sense of control.  So she agreed to the constraints, trusting Agatha in a way she would never have trusted her before.

(Not never would have trusted anyone because she would have trusted Vision, if she truly believed he knew what he was doing.  Would have trusted her brother, if he’d thought she was more of a danger than she was a help.  Had trusted Vision, for a while, when he’d kept her in the complex, away from everything and everyone else.  But his form of constraint hadn’t taught her anything, had been purely reactive.

Agatha’s constraints were there to teach.)

For the past year, Agatha trained Wanda, teaching her the theory of magic, the subtle ways magic liked better than her blatant dinosaur clomping around, how to best protect herself when casting so that magic doesn’t become a drain on her, so that she ties it into something else as a source.  And as Wanda grew, Agatha modified the restraints, shifting them so that Wanda could expand, stretch her wings—

Not fly.  Not yet.  But maybe something close to it.

~

Of course, this wasn’t the only thing that happened in the past year.

Agatha took Wanda out.  In part to show the town that she wasn’t as dangerous as she once was and in part because she wanted to take her out.  For dates, for movies (which they only paid attention to half of the time), for walks around the town for her their mental health.  It was gentle.  Soft.  Nice.

They’d spent time with the new citizens who’d moved into Westview when those who wanted nothing to do with the city where they were so traumatized left, and while some of them were apprehensive of Wanda, most were pleased to meet a former Avenger.  (Former because Wanda refused to use the term; former because while her magic was restrained, she didn’t feel comfortable trying to take on more powerful foes.  Fortunately for them, no one came to call.  Not in that year.)  A few of the townspeople who’d originally decided to stay left once they realized Wanda, too, was staying; not all of them, which led to some dirty looks in the marketplace, even now, even a year out, but they know who they are, they know to stay away.

And, of course, they’d spent time with the handful who knew, who lived through it all, and who still cared about Wanda.  Eventually, even Sarah’s daughter, Emily, met Wanda.  They were friends now, or at least as close as they could be, considering.

Wanda hadn’t picked up a job, since she’d been focused entirely on her own studies, but Agatha continued to teach her kids and, on occasion, brought Wanda in to tell them stories.  At first, she’d been apprehensive and quiet and uneasy.  The first day she’d come in, all she did was sit and listen, and she’d been set to do so the second day, until one of the kids came up and asked for her help.  It’d taken the kids warming up to her to get her to talk at all.

That was the thing people found they loved about the witches most: not their power, but their stories.

Stories made them human, made others human: Agatha’s of the ancient past and people to whom history gave only a sanitized view and Wanda’s of the recent past and people to whom media gave only a superheroic view.  They took people down from their pedestal and made them real.

Westview thrived on that.

~

Now, though, today, with Wanda’s restraints half gone, the two witches are putting on a sort of public display for the whole town to enjoy.  Even though a select few of the townspeople groaned about it, and even though an even more select few refused to attend outright simply due to Wanda’s involvement, most of them are there, front and center, as the two craft holiday decorations.

They started with the tree – Wanda breaking apart the ground in the center of town so that Agatha could cause a tree to sprout from soil beneath.  (Symbolism.  They practiced this.)  Then Agatha covered the tree with small candles ignited with smaller, flickering flames, leaving them for a few moments before Wanda captured the flames in little glass bulbs and left them strung around the tree as its new lights.  As soon as she finishes, the streetlamps around the town flash and flicker before changing into the same fire encased in clear bulbs as the tinier lights on the tree, each with a bright ribbon tying itself out of the air in different colors – red, green, blue, white, yellow – one after another, spreading out from the town center where they wait.

It’s at this point that Wanda sticks Agatha with the metal pole, when Sarah shouts out at both of them, when Wanda glances down and sees Emily standing next to her, eyes lit with wonder.

And hears Agatha’s voice gentle in her mind, This is why we do this.  She lets that rest for a few moments before continuing with the barest hint of spite, But if you pull that shit again, hon, I will end this thing so fast—

Wanda ignores her.  More to the point, Wanda does not believe her because Agatha loves the children around them just as much as Wanda does.  Wanda would never take this from them, and so she knows that Agatha never would either.

It helps that she can already feel the strain.  She has to focus.  Deep breath in.  Deep breath out.

Don’t focus on how the cold has turned Agatha’s nose an adorable red.  Don’t focus on how the slight breeze pushes her curly, frizzy hair out behind her and exposes her very kissable neck.  Don’t focus on the soft purple glow magic cradles her in, or the way it lights up her eyes just as surely as Wanda’s own must be lighting with scarlet, or the purple covering the tips of her fingers turning the same red as her nose from the cold.

Don’t focus on all of these things and call her a baby again because she’s her baby.

Save that for later.

Later.

Wanda tears her eyes away from Agatha, licks her lips, tugs the bottom one between her teeth, and pretends that she doesn’t feel Agatha’s control of magic tangling with her own or the threads of magic her fingers are dipped into rippling against those Agatha’s are or the briefest of moments when their fingers brush against each other as they manipulate the same thread.  It’s an entirely different feel in magical space instead of in physical, and the thrill of it that shoots through her is different and indescribable and it is absolutely unfair how Agatha doesn’t react to it at all.

Stop. Looking. At. Agatha.

At least Sarah isn’t yelling about what she doesn’t notice.

Wanda takes a deep breath in.  She focuses.  Sets her menorah where she wants it, where it can – and will – be seen.  Smiles when she hears one of the children in the crowd gasp and comment and turns just enough to see them pointing at it with excitement.  Reaches out to entangle her mind with Agatha’s again, murmurs, This is why we do this, and lets her smug joy mix with Agatha’s.

Notes the bright and thriving neon blue coloring everything in Agatha’s mind and chuckles.

~

They don’t need to make any excuse to leave after their holiday extravaganza; Wanda is completely honest when she says that she is exhausted, although Agatha is less than honest when she says she needs to take care of her student.  Sarah shoots them a look for that, one brow raising, but Agatha just meets her gaze and raises both brows twice with a snide smirk lifting one corner of her lips.  Wanda pretends to ignore all of this, but she sees it.  Holds it with the smallest of warmths in the center of her chest.  And expects Agatha to wait only just long enough for Wanda to close the door before—

Well.

Wanda decides to take things into her own hands.  She pretends that her exhaustion is significantly more than it is, so that Agatha opens the door with the smallest of magic and shuts it with the same, only for Wanda to press her against the door and smother her with a kiss.  She feels Agatha sigh against her and takes that as encouragement to rest her hands on Agatha’s hips, on the small curves of her waist, and to pull her tighter to her.  It’s when she moves her lips and begins to kiss along Agatha’s jaw that she hears it—

Not a sigh of approval or requited longing, but of frustration and gentle disapproval.

Wanda ignores this and keeps kissing her anyway, brushing her nose against that sensitive spot on the curve of Agatha’s chin.  “Is something wrong?”

“Hon,” Agatha says with a third, more annoyed sigh, “you know I love when you do this, but—”  She cuts off with a sharp gasp as Wanda bites, hard, on that sensitive spot.  “Dear,” she lets out in a breathy hum, “you aren’t listening.”

“Mmm…no,” Wanda agrees and disagrees.  “You’re talking too much.”  She resumes her nibbling along Agatha’s neck.

Agatha snakes a hand through Wanda’s hair, wraps her fingers through far too many locks, and then grips tightly before tugging Wanda’s head up with a sharp shock of pain.  “We’ve talked about this, love.  Using so much magic all at once can give you a high, especially in tandem with a partner, especially with someone that you already—”

“Too much talking.”  Wanda presses her lips to Agatha’s again, takes her lower lip between her teeth and tugs in the way that she knows Agatha likes.

Wanda.  Agatha’s voice thrums loud in her mind in the same instant that she lets out an audible groan of pleasure.  You’re still not—

If you really wanted me to stop, you’d tell me to stop.  Wanda presses her against the door again, causing Agatha’s shirt to lift just enough for her to brush her fingers against her skin.  She rubs her thumbs in circles just above Agatha’s hip bones, lets the tip of her right thumbnail just sink into Agatha’s skin, grins at another audible groan as it releases into her mouth.  Clearly, you don’t want that.

It takes a moment for Agatha to get herself together enough to respond, and in that moment, she turns the tide, places her hand on Wanda’s throat, and pushes her back until she bumps against the nearest wall.  Wanda wants to melt into her, and half does.  But now Agatha has enough of an upper hand to pull her lips from Wanda’s and meet her eyes with a firm stare, broken only slightly in efficiency due to how wide her pupils have grown.  “I’m suffering from the same after-effects you are, hon,” she says, breath ragged between words.  “I—”  She cuts herself off, eyes falling to Wanda’s lips, and then forces herself to take a deep breath, drawing her eyes back up to meet Wanda’s instead of letting them fall farther.  “We need to rest before—”

“This is rest—”

“No, it’s physical exertion that leaves you even more exhausted than you already are.”  Agatha’s gaze drops again, lower, and traces its way up Wanda’s body in a way that makes Wanda shiver, especially when Agatha tugs her own swollen, split lower lip between her teeth.  Then she lets out another sigh.  “It’s a nice form of exhaustion, sure, love, but.”  She cups Wanda’s face and brushes her thumb along her cheek.  “We’re already exhausted.  You’re already exhausted.  And magic will take advantage of that.”  She leans across and gives Wanda a chaste kiss.  “Not right now.”

Wanda pouts.  “You’re just too old for this shit.”

Agatha chuckles.  “You want to learn from your mistakes, that’s all well and good, but don’t drag me down with you, hon.”  She wraps a lock of Wanda’s hair around her finger.  “Been there, done that.”

“So what,” Wanda says, pouting, “would you have me do instead?”

“I believe, in the business you want, it would be called aftercare.”

~

Which is how, not fifteen minutes later, the two witches end up in bed together, draped in their matching wicked witch oversized shirts, with a television turned on right across from them.  Wanda rests her head on Agatha’s shoulder, close enough to brush her nose against her partner’s neck.  “I get to pick the show,” she murmurs.  “If I don’t pick the show, I might—”

Agatha flattens Wanda’s hand where it has already started to move up her thigh.  “Whatever show you want, super star.”  She flicks through channels until Wanda places her other hand on hers.  Her brows raise.  “This one?”

“Mmmm.”  Wanda nuzzles against her neck, curls closer, and rests her head on Agatha’s chest.  “This one’s good.”  She settles against her partner with a hum of contentment.  It’s an episode she’s seen a million and one times before, which means technically she doesn’t have to pay any attention at all, if she doesn’t want that.  She leans up and kisses Agatha’s jaw.

“Be good, hon.”  Agatha strokes one finger along Wanda’s spine.  Up and down, up and down, like a spell she casts solely to soothe.

“I’m being good.”

“Of course, you are.”

Wanda leans up and meets Agatha’s eyes.  “I’m always being good.”

Agatha raises an eyebrow again.  “Is that so?”  She leans forward as though to give Wanda a kiss but instead reaches up and presses that kiss to her forehead instead.  “Maybe,” she whispers, running a finger along Wanda’s jaw, “if you are good enough, I’ll see fit to give you a reward.”

“A reward?” Wanda echoes, her eyes lighting up.  Her lips spread in a smug grin.  “What kind of reward?”

Agatha’s gaze flits away.  “Maybe tomorrow, if you aren’t too tired, we can play with magical after-effects.”  She meets Wanda’s eyes again.  “Nothing as strong as today, but enough testing that—”

“—that next time, I get what I want,” Wanda completes for her.

“What we both want,” Agatha corrects.  She runs her finger gently along Wanda’s jaw again and lets out another sigh – this one the sigh of yearning that Wanda most associates with her.  “It will be exhausting, hon.  But I’m sure you’ll be up for the challenge.”

Wanda leans forward, brushing her nose against Agatha’s.  “I’m sure I will.”

When Agatha kisses her this time, there’s just enough fire to it that Wanda thinks maybe – maybe – she’ll give in.  But then Agatha settles back against her pillow, turned to the television, and runs her fingers along Wanda’s back again.

Tomorrow, Wanda hears, clear, in her mind.  Tomorrow.

Even as that electric blue throbs all around them.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #kisses through the decades with wanda and agatha #agatha harkness #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #mcu #wandavision #wagatha #wandagatha #harximoff #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

The Thrall of Magic XI - 2020's (V)

Chapter Summary: No, Wanda Maximoff, much like magic itself, isn’t very subtle.

But Agatha knows magic.  Wanda?  She’s still trying to figure her out.

Hopefully, it won’t take her another three hundred years to do so.

companion piece to Kisses Through The Decades

Agatha Harkness/Wanda Maximoff Chapter Rating: M for dark themes and brief sexual content Fic Rating: M for dark themes and sexual content

AO3

previous chapter

In the morning, they fight.

If it can even still be called morning anymore, given just how long Wanda tries to sleep away what Agatha knows is a hangover.  Agatha doesn’t have one herself, but she’d placed a glass of water and some aspirin next to the bed when she left in the hope that Wanda would take care of herself before coming downstairs.

(In the hope that maybe Wanda would remember something of the night before.)

But Wanda doesn’t remember anything, doesn’t even remember that she’d made her shirt mimic Agatha’s herself, and from her reactions, she certainly doesn’t remember that Agatha is, well, Agatha.

It’s disappointing, to say the least.  Even more disappointing is that after all that effort Agatha put into teaching Wanda to trust her again yesterday, it suddenly doesn’t matter.  She sighs, grits her teeth, and this time, when Wanda snipes at her, she says, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice, “Wanda, dear, if I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now.”  She gestures to the shirt with one hand.  “That was the point of the shirt, hon.”

The revelation of her magic for something so simple and mundane as—

It doesn’t matter if Wanda doesn’t remember.

But Wanda doesn’t take her medicine, even though she goes upstairs, and Wanda won’t eat any of Agatha’s food, even though she’s clearly hungry and food will help with her hangover, because Wanda apparently thinks that the witch who hasn’t killed her yet would have more fun poisoning her food than actually trying to help her.  The gall of it sits deep in Agatha’s stomach, churns there the same way she once would have churned milk into butter, turning what might once have been anxieties into frustrations instead.  Annoyances.  Her unsubtle attempts to kill Wanda in a subtle attempt to get Wanda to put up the protection spells that every witch should know how to make have had more of an effect then every other time Agatha could have killed Wanda and didn’t, more than Agatha even trying to point that out.

“I don’t want to hurt you, love.  You might not trust me enough to believe that, but—”  Agatha cuts herself off because Wanda huffs and crosses her arms and acts very much like she won’t believe that and not only won’t believe it but feels annoyed with Agatha for even suggesting it.  “Fine.”  She shoves the bowl of oatmeal she had been eating from into Wanda’s lap.  “Just take mine, hon.  I obviously didn’t poison that one.”

“You really think I’m going to—”

Agatha shoots her a look.  “I’m not going to jeopardize my life just to kill you, dear.  What kind of idiot do you take me for?”  She pushes herself up off the couch and shoves her hands into her pockets.  “You’re the superhero here.  Not me.”

But when Agatha stalks off into the kitchen, half-feigning anger (lies are always at their strongest when they are half full of truth), all she does is conjure up a second bowl of oatmeal to match the first and stands just inside the doorframe to stare at Wanda.  Her eyes narrow as the great prophesied Scarlet Witch struggles to eat, first staring at the bowl in her lap before tentatively lifting the spoon to her lips, then gagging on the bite before forcing it down.

But she gets it down.  She takes another bite.

That’s…something.

Agatha starts to stick her fingers into the magic surrounding both of them and then hesitates.  Even without calling it to her for greater understanding, she feels it swirling around her, wanting to help her, wanting to….

To what?

Best not to look.  For once in her life, after months of trying to quit cold turkey, Agatha can resist the impulse.  Best not to look.

Agatha waits until she sees Wanda taking a third bite, waits until Wanda seems to have calmed enough to continue eating without seeming to think too terribly much about it, and then returns to the couch, sitting in her same place and propping her heels up on her coffee table.  The first bite from her new bowl isn’t as good – for all that magic is magic, there’s still a difference between magically conjured food and what she spends time and effort crafting, even if that difference is all in her mind.

(It isn’t all in her mind; she’d run double blind experiments with Cian over the years, and the magically conjured food always ranked lower.  With the exception of their first use of the Time Stone, but given what they’d seen….

Well, no food would have tasted good.

Or so Agatha assumes.  It isn’t as though they’d ever explicitly told her what they’d seen.  She’d just had to guess at it through subtle implications here and there – and then, well.  They died.  Half of the universe’s population disappeared.  She has a good idea of what they’d seen now.)

Wanda barely glances up as Agatha enters.  She pauses with the spoon halfway to her mouth, swallows hard.  When Agatha raises an eyebrow, she furrows her brows and stares down at her bowl of oatmeal.  “What?”

“You don’t have to stop eating on account of me, hon.”  Agatha lifts her spoon and gestures to Wanda’s bowl.  “I’m not poisoning it with just my presence.”

Wanda’s fingers clench tighter along her bowl.  “You poison everything with your presence,” she mutters under her breath.  Then she gives a little shake of her head and forces herself to eat another bite.

This time, Agatha doesn’t say anything.  That would be stooping to whatever level Wanda has decided to be on today, which would be fun at any other time, but not right now, when Wanda is determined to hate her.  To hurt her.  When anything and everything she says will probably be taken in exactly the wrong way because Wanda wants to be an internet troll to any and every fact she might be given.

About halfway through, Wanda admits, softer than anything, so soft she probably doesn’t even mean for Agatha to hear it, “This is really good.”

Agatha snorts.  “Of course, it is, sugar cube.  I’ve had centuries to perfect it.  Everything I cook is good.  You’re just lucky enough to taste it.”  Spinning subtleties – age as authority, marking herself as good (this is a lie, it’s a lie), calling Wanda lucky.  Little bits and pieces of words that can sink into her mind, things Wanda won’t catch or know that she needs to catch.  Things that probably won’t even stick.  She sighs.  “Thank you,” she murmurs, much softer, “for the compliment.”

“You deserve it.”

The breath catches in Agatha’s throat, and she nearly chokes.  She coughs twice, spluttering, and then shoots Wanda a look when the other witch doesn’t do anything about it.  “Little help here?”

Wanda shakes her head.  “Like I care if you die.”

“Ouch.”  Agatha places a hand over her heart and feigns being hurt.  “You wound me.  You’re so cruel!”

At her words, Wanda flinches.  “I’m not cruel, Agatha.  You’re the one who tried to kill me.  You are the one who lured me to a location where I couldn’t use my magic—”

“—and you are the one who cursed me to be a sitcom character for all of eternity.  I’d call that one overkill, hon.”  Agatha places her now empty bowl on the coffee table and then leans back comfortably against the back of the couch once more.  “You want to talk, dear?  Well, let’s talk.”  She spreads her hands out in front of her.  “I’m an open book.  What do you want to know?”

Wanda follows Agatha’s lead and sets her own, half-eaten bowl of oatmeal to the side.  “When did you break my spell?” she asks immediately, and not in the conversational sort of tone Agatha would like, but one that’s much more frustrated.  “How did you change back?”

“You really think I’m going to tell you that?”  Agatha lets out a cackle, loud and bright.  “I’m not stupid, babe.  You’d just curse me again, and then where would I be?  Not having any of this, I’ll tell you that.”

“You told me how the protection spell works.”

“Because that was something you needed to know.”  Agatha gives Wanda a firm look and waits until the littlest witch meets her eyes, waits even longer to see if her gaze drops with shame.  “Every witch – not even the ones worth their salt, like you and I are – every witch learns that spell first.”  She points to the runes carved into her walls.  “Each of those runes protects you from harm, from magic turning its back on you and having its way with you, and you were a fool to try and craft your entire Hex without having that up to keep it from killing you.”

Wanda scoffs.  “I wouldn’t have died—”

Agatha chuckles, dark.  “Wanda, hon, your brain was so overloaded with all the spells you were maintaining – foolish, again, any witch who knows anything knows not to tie their spells to themselves in perpetuity, you make concrete changes, and you—”  She cuts herself off, trembles with her own frustration, and gives a little shake of her head.  “You saw the way the Hex glitched after you expanded it, but you couldn’t see how you were glitching.  From the very beginning, Wanda, you were glitching, and I had to step in and fix things so you wouldn’t consume yourself with your foolish—”

“You could change things?” Wanda interrupts.  Her eyes widen imperceptibly, and her head tilts to one side as she considers Agatha, as she considers what she’s just heard.  “You told me spells, once cast, couldn’t be altered.”

“I also pretended to try and kill you, Wanda.  Keep with the program.”  Agatha waves one hand dismissively.  “That isn’t the point, hon—”

“I could have kept my family?” Wanda hisses out, glaring at her.  “You could change my spells, and you didn’t change things so they could have lived?”

Agatha stares at the fury of a witch who cannot harm her.  She stares, and she doesn’t say anything at first, just lets Wanda’s face grow more and more red with her anger, and then finally, finally says, “You would have died, love.  It would have killed you.”

Wanda’s eyes grow dark.  “Then you should have let me die.”

“If you died, hon, they would have died, too.  That’s what casting a spell in perpetuity means.  They weren’t permanent creations; they were tied to you.  Sucking your magic.  Your life.  And you would have died trying to keep them alive, and then they would have died, and no good would have come out of it at all.”  Agatha reaches out and hesitantly places a hand over Wanda’s.  ‘There was no way I or you or any other lesser witch could have fixed those spells to keep them alive.  I didn’t lie to you when I said your spells were broken, hon.  They were.  I did what I could to save you, and that was hard enough.”

Agatha almost continues, almost suggests that she wouldn’t have saved them even if she could.  The boys, perhaps, deserved more than the few days of life they were given – even if those days made them look like they’d been given years, there would always be those gaps in their memories, those dynamics of family life that would have come from the time they’d lived together through those years that got skipped entirely – but from the way Wanda acted in the Hex itself, the way she’d kept Vision from her while everything fell apart, the way she’d come to Agatha herself for comfort instead of—

She’s lived with a broken family.  She’s been a broken family.

….

It doesn’t matter.  She couldn’t have saved them anyway.

“Why did you save me?” Wanda asks, not looking up.  “I’m the Scarlet Witch.  I’m destined to destroy the world.  It would have been better if I died.  You could have let me die.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”  Agatha lifts one shoulder half-heartedly.  “You didn’t deserve that.  Not then, and not now.”  She catches the frozen look on Wanda’s face, the way Wanda starts to look at her the way she did after realizing she loved her, like looking at something and examining her, like looking for flaws, and she immediately backpedals, immediately says something else to cover her words.  “Besides, the sex was good.  Didn’t really feel like letting you die after that.”

That’s easier than saying she hadn’t expected Wanda to accept the title of Scarlet Witch – any witch who knows anything would have known better than to do that, but then Wanda hadn’t known the most basic of protection spells, so why she thought she would know about her.  It’s also easier than getting into the other prophesies regarding the Scarlet Witch: clarifications, specifications, elaborations on things mentioned in the Darkhold, which is not the greatest source to begin with, which anyone who knew anything would know.

Agatha’s frustration towards Wanda’s severe lack of knowledge only grows, and it isn’t calmed by the look of shock and disgust that Wanda shoots in her direction at her words.  She just rolls her eyes.  “Don’t look at me like that, lover girl.  The sex was good, and you know it was good, which is why you came back.”  Not so subtle change of subject, but subtle enough that Wanda will probably fall for it.  “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?  You were all over me last night—”

“You started that.”

“—which is so much worse than it was before.”  Agatha doesn’t darken or harden.  She just pushes.  “At least in the Hex, you wouldn’t have used Agnes as your fuck puppet, but now that you’ve decided you don’t care about Agatha Harkness, it’s fine to use her to—”

“I didn’t.”  Wanda snaps, and she snaps the words out, and her fingertips dig into the cushions, scarlet magic swirling between her fingers.  She doesn’t even look up at Agatha, just tenses and stares out in front of her.  “I didn’t, and that’s not why I came, and I told you I didn’t, and I would never—”

“You almost did, hon.”

“But. I. didn’t.”

Wanda takes a deep breath, but she still can’t look up, and she still won’t look at Agatha, and she still refuses to meet her eyes.  She just stares out in front of her, unfocused, knuckles so tight they might as well be white, the magic threading between them looking for somewhere, anywhere to go, but unable to go after Agatha, even if they’re sent to her.  “You don’t….”  She starts to say it, swallows, and shakes her head.  “It doesn’t matter what you did, you don’t deserve that.”

“Means a lot coming from the woman who locked me in my own mind for daring to oppose her.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“I know, hon.”  Agatha lets out a stifled bark of a laugh, just one sharp cough.  “You thought I tried to kill you, so you did the worst thing you could think to do to me.  Then you left me here.  Alone.”  She stares forward, away from Wanda, and lets herself speak.  “Did you even think of what people would do to me?  What they could do to me?  Did you think enough to put any protections on—”  She cuts herself off with another coughed laugh.  “Of course, you didn’t.  You didn’t even know what a protection spell was.”

“Stop,” Wanda whispers.  “Please, stop.”

Agatha stops.  Nods once.  Then asks again, “Why are you here, Wanda?  Why did you come back to Westview?”

I want—

“I don’t know,” Wanda says instead, the thought still ringing in the air between them.  “I don’t know what I thought I’d find, but this….”  She lets out a long breath and laughs, a harsh, cruel thing.  “This isn’t it.”  Then she pushes herself up from the couch, walks through the living room, and out the front door, letting it click softly shut behind her.

Agatha sits on the couch and waits.  She stares at the closed door, waiting for Wanda to storm back in the same way she stormed off.  A part of her starts to reach out her mind as though to brush against the younger witch’s, but she recoils from that.  That’s not what she wants.  And when Wanda doesn’t return, she lets out a sigh, gathers their bowls, and takes them to the kitchen to clean.

The thing of it is this: Agatha Harkness doesn’t believe in miracles, and expecting Wanda to return for her, to stay here with her, to trust her would, right now, be a pretty big miracle.  She knows enough to be grateful the little witch who could didn’t try to overcome her spell, didn’t do more than just walk out.  If she’d take it, that would be a miracle, but she won’t.

Magic curves about her wrists, about her ankles, about her neck.  Sometimes, it feels like a chain, holding her here, to a life she doesn’t think she deserves.  More times than not, if she’s honest with herself.  Right now, it’s softer than that, gentler, and she doesn’t stop herself before she says, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

It’s the truth.

She’s never known what magic wants from her, if it wants anything at all.

Magic runs through her veins the same way it runs through the veins of all witches, living or dead, but trying to determine which came first is a chicken and the egg discussion.  Did magic fill them first?  Or did witches notice magic and try to bring it under their control first?  Did they feel it thrumming within them and wonder what else it touched?  Who can say?  Perhaps the reason magic lashes out at those trying to corral it so often is that this was never its intent.  It gave gifts, and humans used those gifts to try and overcome the giver.

Very few witches actually love magic.  They see it as a tool to use for their own purposes.  Under the influence of the Darkhold, Agatha did as well, telling herself that she still loved it the same as she always did.  But at one point, she did, and now again, she does.

Wanda, on the other hand….

A witch who has never been trained cannot truly know what magic is.  She does not know its language and so cannot speak to it, cannot love it.  Not for what it is.  She doesn’t even see it as a tool.

She doesn’t see it at all.

~

“Well,” Agatha speaks into the emptiness of her house as she finishes cleaning the dishes, as she sets them just to one side to dry, “it’s just you and me again, isn’t it?”

Magic might listen to her, but it never really responds.  That’s fine.  She’s certain that it doesn’t feel lonely, not the way she does, given how easily it connects with everything else in the cosmos, but she sense that it doesn’t feel particularly happy with this outcome.  Or maybe that’s her own unease coloring the whole.  She can’t know.  For all that she’s loved and studied magic, there are still things about it that she cannot understand – and perhaps never will.

Then soft, cool hands find their place at the small of Agatha’s waist, and she relaxes into them with a purr.  “Wondered when you would come back, hon.”

“Hush.”

Agatha ignores that.  “Did you find what you wanted out there, Wanda?  Did you figure out why it is you came back?”  She turns in her arms and leans against the kitchen counter.  The way this presses against her back should make her uncomfortable, but this time, it doesn’t.  Then she reaches out and asks without words, Or are you too afraid to ask?

Do you love me? Wanda thinks at the same moment that she asks, “Was any of it real?”  The words she says are so much softer, so much more intimate than her thoughts, which yowl as a kitten demanding attention.

“Oh, my dear girl,” Agatha chuckles, reaching up just enough to brush her fingertips through Wanda’s hair.  “I already told you.  I always wanted….”  Her gaze drops to Wanda’s lips.  “Everything that happened in the Hex was real.  All of it.  Vision was real.”  As she speaks, she feels Wanda flinch away from her.  “Your boys were real.”  She places her hand on Wanda’s waist, holding her there as she trembles.  “And me?  Hon.  You could never have created someone like me.”  Her eyes lift, peer into those emerald orbs, and holds their gaze.  When she speaks, her words come soft, softer even than Wanda’s were before: “Do you trust me?”

At first, Wanda doesn’t say anything.  Her gaze drops.  She bites her lower lip, head tilting ever so slightly to one side as she seems to examine Agatha, what she knows of her, what she’s said.  Then her fingers begin to slowly sweep along the curve of Agatha’s waist, thumb brushing up and down while she holds her in place.  “Why did you come to Westview, Agatha?  You must have wanted something.  Did you find it?”

Magic brought me here, Agatha wants to say.  The ripples of Wanda’s mistaken casting reached out to her where she’d mourned in New York – which isn’t so far, given that Westview is only in New Jersey, but Agatha believes those ripples would have found her wherever she was – and that’s the thing of it, isn’t it?  Magic brought her here because magic let those Wanda’s casting send off so many of her inner alarms that Agatha couldn’t not come because magic knew that Wanda needed—

That AGATHA needed—

Agatha catches it then, the threads of magic binding them hopelessly together, as though her eyes have been opened to something so subtle that she would never have been able to notice if it hadn’t been revealed to her by something so cheeky as magic itself.

And all she can do is laugh.

Wanda flinches again, her eyes widening.  “What?” she asks.  “What’s so funny?  I don’t—”

The hilarity of it all captures Agatha, and she quivers with it, leans forward and rests her head just above Wanda’s chest, laughing so hard that tears spring to her eyes.  “I’ve been such a fool,” she mutters between breaths as she finally calms.  “Such. a fool.”  She reaches her fingers into magic itself, thrills when it wraps itself around her, brushes against her, gentle as she’s always tried to be with it, when she’s been in her right mind.

Perhaps magic does speak, if she’s inclined to listen.

You love me.

You want—

Agatha stills herself.  She leans back to see Wanda’s confused expression and tries her best not to laugh.  “You wouldn’t get it, hon.”  She pats Wanda’s cheek.  “It’s a secret, meant only for me.”  Then she stretches up, brushes her nose against Wanda’s, and asks with a hum, “Would you still like me to catch you, dear?  Now that you’re falling?”

Wanda’s brows shoot up.  “Am I?” she asks, confused, even as her hands tighten their hold on Agatha’s waist, fingers digging into her skin.  “Am I still falling?”

Too subtle.

“Mmhm,” Agatha purrs.  She angles herself closer to Wanda.  “You’re falling for me.”  Her mouth presses against the spot where Wanda’s jaw and neck just meet.  Then she runs her tongue along the sensitive skin there, tugs it between her lips, and sucks gently.

Wanda gasps.  “Agatha.”  The word slips through her lips like air escaping boiling water.  “You…you can’t just—”

Agatha bites down.

A startled squeak.  Then Wanda tilts her head ever so gently to the side, a silent request for Agatha to continue, and when she does, she lets out the gentles of groans.  “This isn’t fair, you know,” she mutters.

“What was it you said last night?” Agatha purrs between nibbling kisses.  “All’s fair in love and—”  Her voice cuts off as Wanda lifts her onto the counter, and when she meets Wanda’s eyes, their pupils dark and hungry, she hums with pleasure.  “You want me, don’t you, hon?”

“As badly as you want me,” Wanda growls softly.  She spreads Agatha’s legs just enough to slot herself between them and lets out another little sound of approval as Agatha wraps her legs tight around her waist.  She pauses just long enough to search Agatha’s eyes.  “You’ll catch me,” she asks, hesitant, “when I fall?”

Agatha doesn’t answer with words.  She captures Wanda’s chin with both hands, lifts her head, and parts her lips against Wanda’s, hungrily drinking her in.  It’s only when Wanda melts against her, when she finally lets herself fall and the magic created between them overpowers all else, that Agatha opens her mind to her with a gentle, Of course, I will, love.

It’s what I was made to do.

~

No, Wanda Maximoff, much like magic itself, isn’t very subtle.

But Agatha knows magic.  Wanda?  She’s still trying to figure her out.

Hopefully, it won’t take her another three hundred years to do so.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #the thrall of magic with agatha and wanda #kisses through the decades with wanda and agatha #agatha harkness #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #mcu #wandavision #wagatha #wandagatha #harximoff #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

The Thrall of Magic X - 2020's (IV)

Chapter Summary: Wanda looks up when she enters, drink carefully held between her hands.  She leans against the wall the way awkward kids do in all those horrible eighties high school movies, but when she looks up and her emerald eyes find Agatha’s, she smiles.  None of the others can see the change then – Agatha’s fairly certain that Wanda doesn’t even notice it – but in that moment, Wanda starts to glow.

That is magic.

(It isn’t very subtle.  Not really.)

And drawn to magic like a moth to the flame, Agatha moves to Wanda, takes her drink, sips it, and sets it to one side with a raised brow.  “I think,” she says, “this party needs a dance floor.  What do you think, hon?”

companion piece to Kisses Through The Decades

Agatha Harkness/Wanda Maximoff Chapter Rating: M for sexual content Fic Rating: M for dark themes and sexual content

AO3

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Most people don’t acknowledge that magic exists.

You may say that’s not true, but it is.  In everything, there’s a little bit of magic – how else could air pulled in through struggling lungs be turned into something that propels a huge body forward?  Food stripped down to pieces so small that it isn’t even really food anymore but becomes fuel.  You might call that science – most people might – but science is just a way of seeing magic and trying to logic through it.  Just because you understand the process of something doesn’t mean it isn’t magic.

If you ask Agatha Harkness, she would say that the way Wanda slowly opens up to the others over the course of a short party is nothing short of great magic, but of a sort that would be a true tragedy to try and force.  There’s something magical in the way that Wanda accepts Todd’s words with a quiet sort of nod, the way she chats with Harold over his cocktails, the way she sits next to Sharon but not so close that Sharon will bristle.  These are things Wanda does instinctively, navigating her own anxieties of being around these people and soothing their anxieties in so doing.  There’s nothing that the average person would call magic in that.

But Agatha sees it, and she knows it, and she calls it such.

Magic wraps itself around Wanda and fills her every movement, her every action, her every way of being.  Where Wanda steps, magic ripples around her and bends – not to her will, but to her, which is an entirely different thing – and Agatha sees it and doesn’t know not to thrum with an envious sort of approval.

An hour or so into the party, Sarah hooks her elbow through Agatha’s as though to lead her out onto the dance floor (that Agatha started, much to no one’s surprise) but instead drags her back to the bedroom.  She only releases her to shut the door behind them, and then turns to Agatha with narrowed eyes.  “Now—”

“Look, hon, if you wanted me all to yourself,” Agatha starts to say, then pauses just long enough to let her eyes sweep Sarah’s scrawny form, how appetizing she appears with her hair coiffed the way it is, with the pretty pink dress she’s wrapped herself in.

“Agnes.”  Sarah huffs and crosses her arms.

For all that it was a joke, Agatha offers her a smug grin.  “You look good, hon.  But I’m sure Harold has already told you that.”

Sarah’s gaze grows hard.  “I didn’t drag you back here to talk about me.  I want to know what was going on between you and Wanda.”

“Oh, well.”  Agatha turns toward the door.  “That’s really none of your business, dear, so if you don’t mind me.”  She places her hand on the doorknob, only for Sarah to grab her wrist, fingernails digging into her skin.  Her teeth grit together – she does not think of how her mother once punished her – and growls out, “I don’t think that was your best idea, hon.”

“Then quit trying to run from me.”

Agatha breathes in magic.  It fills her lungs, threads through her veins, sprouts sharp along her nails.  “Sarah Proctor,” she continues to growl, “I may not have seemed a witch to you, and I may have been gentler with you than Wanda was, but that does not mean I’m not still a witch, and if you do not let me go, hon, then I will be forced to—”

Sarah’s grip on her wrist tightens.  Odd, for someone who is so afraid of magic, to instinctively keep putting herself in its way.  “Agnes, she doesn’t know who you are.  She thinks you’re like we were.”

“And you know this,” Agatha says, finally turning to meet Sarah’s eyes with her own, knowing that there are spots of deep purple within them, “but haven’t pretended to ask her about me in the least, have you?”  She tears her wrist out of Sarah’s grip, feeling her skin tear, and pulls herself up to her full height.  “The entire town knows what she meant to do to me, knows that she left me as she once had you, but you wouldn’t fight her for me, would you?”

“Agnes, that’s not the same as—”

“Leave us be, Sarah Proctor.”  Agatha glares at her.  “We have danced this dance before, and Wanda cannot hurt me.”  She runs her fingers along her wrist, tucking into magic, and mutters under her breath as her skin stitches itself back together as whole and imperfect as it was before.

Sarah stares at Agatha’s wrist.  “What happened to you,” she says calmly, “in the Hex?”  Then she glances up and meets Agatha’s gaze, holding it with her own.  “Why can’t Wanda hurt you?”

And Sarah doesn’t say it, but Agatha hears it in her thoughts so loud that she doesn’t even need to reach far to find the words, And how can I get it for my daughter?

“Wanda did something else to me,” Agatha admits.  “Something she does not understand and which neither of us can give anyone else.”  This latter is not entirely true, but she considers it an essential lie.  Could Wanda make someone else impenetrable to her magic?  Yes.  Would she?  Not likely.  A child, perhaps, yes, but there is too much risk in that child growing up and seeking to harm her – with no way to protect herself, what would Wanda do then?  But then Wanda would never think of that.

(Wanda doesn’t even know what she did to Agatha, and she would hate herself if she did.  More than that, she would try to undo it.

But magic protects Agatha from Wanda now.  Not because it likes Agatha particularly.  But because that’s what Wanda’s spell did.)

Agatha is certain that if Wanda believed she could make everyone safe from herself, then she would, to her own detriment.  She would think that is something she could revoke at any time, cast a massive spell, and realize much later that all she has done is broken herself.  Someone would come to find her.  Someone would come to kill her.

And if she didn’t have any better reason to maintain her life, Wanda would let them.

No.  Best to tell Sarah that this is something that can’t be done again.  Better still to not let Wanda ever know that she did it in the first place.

Then Sarah takes Agatha’s hand in her own, gentle, and lifts it until her now healed wrist rests in the air between them.  “Could she hurt you the way I hurt you?”

“Of course, she can, super star, but only if I let her.”  Agatha gives Sarah a wink.  She nods to her wrist.  “Now, do you want to try that again, or am I free to go, hon?”

There’s an intentional underlying threat here.  If Sarah tries to keep her here, Agatha will not be the one hurting for it.  But she doesn’t want to say that out loud.  Sarah’s a nice gal.  She’s trying to have this conversation out of the goodness of her heart, which mostly makes her an even better gal.

But Sarah Proctor is in over her pretty little head.

Sarah steps forward and takes Agatha’s hand gently in her own.  “You are my friend, Agnes,” she says, firm, “and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Agatha snorts and takes her hand out from Sarah’s.  “Then don’t look.”  She turns and leaves the bedroom without another word.  When she returns to the living room, she scans the room and finds that their absence hasn’t entirely been noticed.  The others are still talking amongst themselves.  Harold seems to still be in the kitchen making cocktails, and Wanda….

Wanda looks up when she enters, drink carefully held between her hands.  She leans against the wall the way awkward kids do in all those horrible eighties high school movies, but when she looks up and her emerald eyes find Agatha’s, she smiles.  None of the others can see the change then – Agatha’s fairly certain that Wanda doesn’t even notice it – but in that moment, Wanda starts to glow.

That is magic.

(It isn’t very subtle.  Not really.)

And drawn to magic like a moth to the flame, Agatha moves to Wanda, takes her drink, sips it, and sets it to one side with a raised brow.  “I think,” she says, “this party needs a dance floor.  What do you think, hon?”

Wanda’s eyes widen.  “I don’t think that’s a good—”

But Agatha takes her hands in her own and tugs her out to the middle of the living room floor.  She places her hands at Wanda’s hips the way Wanda’s hands keep finding their way to hers and starts to sway.  “They’ll start the music when they’re ready to join us.”  As she’s speaking, someone starts an old crooner tune.  She leans forward and whispers in Wanda’s ear.  “See?  Told you.”

When she pulls back, Agatha catches the scarlet flush along Wanda’s cheeks hidden beneath that still gentle glow.  She glances over the side and catches Sarah staring at the both of them, her arms crossed, and she tilts her head to one side, gesturing for her to join them.

It takes a moment, but Sarah returns to the floor with her husband.  She nudges Agatha only once as they dance and gives her a look before Agatha can hear in her mind, clear as day, Be careful.  Don’t get yourself killed.

Agatha almost – almost – laughs.  Killed is the very least of her problems.

~

The thing Agatha learns very, very quickly is that her little Sokovian princess does not hold her liquor very well.  Honestly, she would have thought the opposite, given the little she knows of her upbringing, but now she suspects that Wanda didn’t drink much at all in Sokovia, or that when she did, she had her twin brother to keep an eye on her and make sure she would be safe.  (Agatha has a sneaky suspicion it’s that Wanda didn’t drink, that Wanda was the one who kept an eye on a twin brother who was much more likely to drink to excess.)  Or maybe that little terrorist organization they’d been part of hadn’t thought it a great idea to let their pet projects even potentially get drunk.

Whatever the case, Wanda Maximoff is a lightweight, and Agatha has had Harold give her cocktails with a wrong expectation of how well she would hold up, and when Sarah tells them it’s time to go, it has nothing to do with Agatha at all and everything to do with how absolutely sloppy Wanda is becoming.  She stumbles out of the front door, she stumbles down the sidewalk as they walk back to Agatha’s current house, and she stumbles up the stairs to Agatha’s front door.

Anyone else, any other time, Agatha would be much more likely to magic away the heels and replace them with something a little easier to walk in.  But even with Wanda as drunk as she is, she doesn’t want to take that chance.  If the littlest witch notices the change, her drunk reaction could be worse than her sober one.

Nuh-uh.  Bad idea.

So once they are inside, Agatha sits Wanda down on her couch, which is a much safer place than trying to get her upstairs to the spare bedroom.  She crouches down in front of her, places her hands on her knees, and meets Wanda’s dazed emerald eyes.  “Stay here while I get you some water, hon.”  Then she reaches out and just boops Wanda’s nose.  “Don’t try to follow me.”

Wanda breaks into giggles before batting at Agatha’s finger.  “Don’t tell me what to do, Harkness.”  Her giggling cuts off all at once, eyes wide, and she gasps.  “I…I mean Agnes.”  She says the name all in a hush, like it’s some sort of secret between them.

“I know what you mean, dear.”  Agatha brushes errant strands of Wanda’s hair back from her face and gently kisses her forehead as she stands.  “Stay here.”

Wanda nods and keeps nodding as Agatha leaves, but Agatha can hear the commotion she makes in the other room while she pours two glasses of water.  (She might not be drunk – she grew up in a time where beer was safer to drink than water and knows her limits well, which means she knows how to not pass them when she wants to make sure to keep an eye on her tongue, like she does now – but that doesn’t mean she won’t appreciate a glass for herself.)  Then there’s the sharp sound of glass shattering.

“Hon?” Agatha calls out.  “Everything okay in there?”

There’s no answer.

Agatha isn’t afraid for Wanda, for the Scarlet Witch herself.  Magic has chosen her for its own; it won’t let her be harmed too terribly by whatever glass she’s found in Agatha’s living room.  In fact, when Agatha returns, magic has changed her living room to mimic what Wanda imagined it would be – the antique cabinet from the Hex full of ancient teacups and new display on the other side of the fireplace, one that Wanda is standing in front of with a look of chagrin, one that is full of—

“I’m sorry, Nessie, I didn’t mean to—”

Nessie?

Agatha steps carefully across shards of a broken shot glass, sets the glasses of water on the fireplace mantle, but then hesitates before just touching Wanda’s hand.  “It’s fine, hon.  You’re a witch.  You can fix it, remember?”  Instead of looking at the display full of shot glasses (because apparently the new and improved Agnes also collects shot glasses), she looks at Wanda, at the look of embarrassment on her face.

“I’m a little….”  Wanda bites her lower lip.  “I’m a little drunk, Nessie.  I could hurt you.”  She doesn’t even pause before she says, voice low, “I already hurt you.”  Her gaze drops, and her fingers fidget together.  “I don’t want to hurt you.  I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Gently, gently, Agatha lifts Wanda’s chin.  “Look at me, love.”  She waits for Wanda to glance up then meets her eyes.  “You won’t hurt me.  You can’t.”

Wanda shakes her head.  “I already did.  You don’t know, and I already did.  You’re hurting now, and it’s all my fault, and it’s because you hurt me first, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”  Her gaze drops again, fixates on Agatha’s lips as she licks her own.  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” she repeats, slower, leaning forward.

Before she can say anything else – before she can do anything else – Agatha interlaces their fingers.  “Here,” she says, “let me help you.  With the shot glass.”

Wanda jumps away from her.  “Right.  The shot glass.  Right.  I need to fix it, I need to fix everything, I need to—”  She reaches out with her free hand, and the shards of glass stitch themselves back together like so many woven threads.  Then she catches it and holds it out to her.  “Here.  I fixed it.  I fixed something.”

“Good girl.”  Agatha takes the shot glass in her free hand, runs a thumb over the India etched on it in orange, and sets it on the display without looking to see if it fits in place.  “You said you were hurting me, hon?”  She turns to the glasses of water, pretending not to look at Wanda as she asks, “Do you think you could fix me, too?”

Magic ripples around her, and Wanda grows white, ashen.  She turns away from her, returns to the couch, and collapses onto it without saying anything else.  Whatever glow it’d given her at Sarah’s party is long gone; if anything, she’s sunken in on herself.  Chatty, sure, but not in a good way.

Agatha follows her with the glasses of water.  “You need to drink something, dear.”  She hands her the glass.  “Here.  Drink this.  It’ll help you feel better.”

Wanda nods.  Takes the glass.  Sips at it.  Glances around the room.  “We should make a pillow fort,” she says into the silence between them.  “We could make a really good fort in here.  Pietro and I used to make forts all the time, and my mama and papa, they would curl up in them for our shows.”  She bites her lower lip.  “I should have made one with my boys, before….”  Her voice trails off into nothing.

Without a second thought, Agatha pulls the pillow from behind her and throws it at Wanda.

It barely misses her, and Wanda stares at her, open-mouthed.  “I was having a moment!” she finally splutters out.

“You were getting depressed, love, and I will not abide a depressed drunk.”  Agatha takes another sip of her water and sets it to one side.  “Now—”

The pillow hits her square in the face just as she’s sitting back up.

Agatha catches it as it falls into her lap and stares at Wanda, who looks nonchalantly around the rest of the room.  She raises an eyebrow.  “What happened to making a fort, hon?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You just threw this pillow at me.”

“You threw it first.”

“I didn’t hit you.”

“You could have!”  Wanda stares at Agatha, wide-eyed.  “I was holding a glass!  It could have broken!  I could have been hurt—”

Agatha throws the pillow at her again and hits her square in the face.  When it drops into Wanda’s lap, she glares at Agatha.  “That’s not fair,” she says with a pout, crossing her arms.  “I wasn’t ready.  You’re supposed to wait until I’m ready.”

But Agatha just gives her a shrug.  “All’s fair in love and war, super star.  I think you—”

Wanda throws the pillow at her again, but this time, Agatha is ready.  She dodges it neatly and starts to grin up at Wanda, only to notice that the littlest witch isn’t on the other side of the couch anymore but has moved towards her instead.  There’s no time to react before Wanda brushes her fingers along the inside of her knee.

She squirms.  “That’s not a pillow fight—”  Laughter catches in her throat as Wanda continues to tickle her.  “You changed the game, dear—”

“All’s fair in love and war,” Wanda echoes as she leans forward, running her fingers along the small of Agatha’s waist.

Agatha’s breath catches in her throat.  This isn’t just tickling – there’s that, too, obviously – but there’s magic poised at the tip of Wanda’s fingers unbidden, and with every touch along her skin, there’s a double punch, one from Wanda herself, the other the shock of magic, pure and unadulterated, brushing gentle and loving against her.  She curls into the one but recoils from the other, breathless, and doesn’t even notice she’s tried to get Wanda back until both of her wrists are pinned above her head with one of Wanda’s hands.

She should be afraid.

Wanda can’t hurt her.

She’s still afraid.

Wanda can’t hurt her.

“Stop,” Agatha makes out between breaths, soft in her fear and powerlessness.

“Say uncle.”  Wanda’s eyes gleam with drunken amusement, lips curling back in a grin.

Agatha shakes her head.  “No.”

“Say it.”

“No.”

“Say it!”

Agatha squirms.  She looks back and forth, trying to come to her senses, to get that sudden fear under control.  Wanda isn’t trying to hurt her.  She’s just drunk.  She’s just playing.  But pinned and under someone else’s control – under Wanda’s control – sends her senses on high alert.  Normally, she would call on magic to help her, would mutter something under her breath between shaking gasps, would curve her fingertips into the closest threads and set a spell that would set her free.  She won’t do that with Wanda where she is, she won’t do that when she’s already afraid of a witch who isn’t intent on harming her because the moment she does that will change, she won’t make herself more vulnerable by drawing power to herself.

It isn’t instinct, it’s a primal desire to protect self when Agatha breaches the distance between them and kisses Wanda.

Wanda loosens her hold on Agatha’s wrists.  Her tickling fingers settle.  She parts from Agatha, searches her eyes.  “You changed the game,” she accuses.

“Sure did, hon.”  Agatha smirks, heart pounding within her.  “What are you going to do about it?”

The pause lasts less than a second, but it feels longer as Wanda stares down at her, as her pupils widen with an unspoken desire.  “I…I can’t,” she mumbles, hold loosening even further.  “I’ll hurt you—”

She could leave it here.

She could.  Whatever hold the Darkhold might have over her, Wanda is clearly resisting.  Very vocally resisting.  But the question here is how long she can hold out.  Wanda’s magic overcomes her when she’s at her most emotional.  This is not her most emotional.  Not even close.

Agatha leans up again.  “Don’t you remember, hon?”  She brushes her nose against Wanda’s.  “I told you.”  She kisses the curve of her jaw.  “I always wanted—”

Wanda breaks.

When she kisses Agatha, there’s nothing calm or gentle about it, only a sinking, desperate need.  The hand at her waist moves to the edge of her shirt and pushes beneath it as magic unties the ribbon around her; her fingers dig into Agatha’s skin, nails scratching hard enough to prick blood.  She bites Agatha’s tongue, tugs on her bottom lip, and then smiles when Agatha lets out a startled gasp of pain.  “This?” she murmurs, brushing her nose along Agatha’s neck.  “This is…what you wanted?”  She bites hard enough to bruise on Agatha’s pulse point.

And in all of this, magic.  It thrums along Agatha’s skin, stitches each and every wound back together the moment Wanda crafts them, healing every spot of pain while continuing to steadily disrobe her, removing the ribbon about her waist, undoing the clasp of her jeans—

Wanda moves the hand pinning Agatha’s wrists to press against the skin of her waist as her other hand rakes nails higher up Agatha’s skin, and Agatha grabs fistfuls of Wanda’s hair, drags her away from her neck and back up.  She kisses her, bruising Wanda’s lips the way hers have been bruised, magic angry and soothing between them, before she asks, a thought that she makes certain Wanda can hear, Is this what you want?

The other witch doesn’t even hesitate.

I want YOU.

The words roar into Agatha’s mind, and in the same moment she relaxes into the thrall of Wanda’s desperate need, Wanda stops, crumbles against her.  “No,” she murmurs, and again, “No,” and again, “No, no, no, no, no.”  She presses her forehead into Agatha’s clavicle and shakes her head against her skin.  “I can’t.  I can’t—”

Agatha doesn’t move.

“You weren’t supposed to be like this, you said you would catch me, and then you attacked me, and this isn’t you, and I can’t do this to you again.”

Agatha pauses, listens, waits, and then says into the quiet between them, “Do you think maybe this is what I deserve?”

And then that even clearer response, unspoken, No.

Wanda shivers against her, and Agatha wraps her arms around her, running her fingers through Wanda’s hair.  She could say a lot of things in this moment – there are a lot of things to say – but right now, the one that leaves her lips first is, “Thank you,” a pause, and then, “for stopping.”  She can’t be sure if Wanda heard her or if she even understood what she said, but the words rest there between them anyway, a soft and quiet thing.

~

Later, after Agatha has carefully settled Wanda in the spare bedroom, she steps outside with a mug of hot tea, one that near burns her fingers and certainly burns her tongue when she takes the first near boiling drink, burns all the way down her throat.  She needs it, the burn, and she stares up at the cloudless sky, at stars she once knew so well, at what is hidden by artificial lights but not made lesser.  A part of her aches for those months, so early on, after everything with her coven, when the boy she’d loved hid her on his ship and then held her in the crow’s nest while they stared up at a universe that had seemed so large and incomprehensible.  She’d needed someone to stitch her back together then, and she’d needed Cian later to stitch her back from an even further brokenness, one that would have left her dead without their intervention.

Agatha Harkness doesn’t believe in miracles, but she does believe in magic, that when it cares enough it can bend and twist itself to protect those it loves.  She’s just never believed that it could love her.  But in calling her to stitch together this broken witch, doesn’t that mean that those others, too, had been called in to stitch her together?  That, at those points and many others beside, magic was working to heal her, too?

That, maybe, this is what it has been doing all along?

She stares up into the night sky and she speaks to the magic all around her, the magic within her, the magic that throbs in her veins, “Do you love me?”

The stars shine bright about her.  The cool and cooling breeze eases her burnt tongue.  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath of magic.  Breathes it out the same as she always does.

Then stretches her aching back and returns to her aching witch.

~

Wanda isn’t quite asleep when Agatha returns to her room with another glass of water.  She looks up, near groggy, as Agatha places the cup on her bedside table, and asks, bleary, “What are you….”  She rubs her eyes and tries again.  “What are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t let you sleep in that dress, love.”  Without a second thought, Agatha waves her hand and the soft sweater dress and tights Wanda is wearing shift into a plain, oversized white shirt.  “There,” she murmurs.  “That’s better.”

Wanda blinks twice.  Her brow furrows.  “You…magic.”  She looks at the shirt, shakes her head, and then wiggles her own fingers, turning it into an exact copy of the Wicked Witch shirt Agatha is still wearing.  “There,” she says with a sad smile.  “We match.” She runs her fingers along the shirt.  “We’re both wicked.”

Agatha sits on the mattress next to her.  “No, love.”  She brushes strands of hair back out of Wanda’s face.  “We’re both witches.”

It takes a second for what Agatha has said to sink in with what Agatha has done, and once it does, Wanda turns and looks up at her.  “I didn’t hurt you?”

“No,” Agatha says with the same sad smile Wanda wore only moments earlier.  “You could never hurt me.”  Then the expression fades.  “Now scoot.  You’re drunk, and I’m drunk, and you spent a lot of time earlier using me as your Kleenex, so I think I’m allowed.”

Wanda stares at her, confused, and then scoots back.  “You don’t want to hurt me.”

“Never did.”

Wanda’s brow furrows again as Agatha settles beneath the sheets next to her.  “You called me love.”

Agatha sighs.  “Yes, love, it’s a pet name, one of many—”

“Do you love me?”

She doesn’t even hesitate as she wraps Wanda in her arms again, letting them rest easy just at her waist.  They fit there just as easily as Wanda’s hands fit on hers.  “Of course, I do, hon.  Surprised it took you so long to notice.”

Wanda curls against Agatha’s chest.  She hesitates and then asks, her voice even softer, “You’re in love with me, aren’t you, Agatha?”  She says it like a revelation, like she’s held the jewel of their relationship up under the starlight and seen its different facets and known it for what it is, known it for something she’s never seen before.

Instead of saying anything, Agatha shifts away just enough to kiss Wanda’s forehead.  In the morning, a sober Wanda will feel very differently about all of this, but for now – for now – Agatha will take this.  Magic stirs at their touch, a yawning, desperate thing, and for a moment, just a moment, Agatha sees once more the glow that captured Wanda earlier, returning just where her lips brush her skin.  Then she glances further down and meets Wanda’s tired, tired eyes.  “We should get some sleep, dear.”

By the time she finishes saying it, Agatha is certain Wanda has already dozed off.  She’s not sure how much of this Wanda will remember in the morning, but she doesn’t have to worry about it until then, doesn’t want to worry about it until then.  For now, this is all she wants.  Just to lay here, with Wanda in her arms, with magic curled and crafted between them.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #the thrall of magic with agatha and wanda #kisses through the decades with wanda and agatha #agatha harkness #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #mcu #wandavision #wagatha #wandagatha #harximoff #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

Instigation: Chapter Four

Summary: Steve sends Wanda to seek out an old witch he once knew, and eventually, Wanda brings said old witch back to meet her family.

Wanda Maximoff/Agatha Harkness

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter

December 31, 2015.

Wanda stirs.

With her eyes still closed, Wanda curls up closer against the warm soft beneath her.  Fingers brush gentle through her hair.  She hums and curls even closer.  Then she remembers, and her eyes snap open.

“Hush, Wanda, dear.  You’re safe.”

Where once Agnes’s voice might have helped, it doesn’t anymore.  Where once it might have soothed, now it only causes Wanda a stab of anxious pain.  She sits up and immediately locks eyes with the woman who she’d liked so much.  “What,” she says, gritting her teeth together, “did you do to me?”

“Nothing to harm you, dear.”  Agnes’s voice is so smooth and so soft.  She meets Wanda’s eyes with her own bright blue ones, only there are dark circles beneath them now, and she looks just as tired as Wanda felt.  “I told you the truth: I needed to have a private conversation with your friend, Steve.”  She taps her fingertips on her thigh, on the exact place where Wanda’s head just lay.  “It wasn’t anything personal, hon.”

“You….”  Wanda’s eyes widen in realization.  “You put a spell on me—”

“—and now you’re mine.”  Agnes gives her a smile and a wink, but when she sees that Wanda is not amused, she sighs.  “Yes, dear, I did.  It was simpler that way—”

Wanda’s brows furrow.  “Steve called you Agatha.”  She glares at her.  “How many lies have you told me?”

Agnes raises a finger.  “Just one,” she says, still calm, still keeping her eyes on Wanda, as though gauging her expression.  “A very big one, to be sure, my love, but only one.  Only one.”  She seems to note that Wanda is about to say something else, and she cuts her off before she begins.  “And I will explain everything to you now,” she says, meeting Wanda’s eyes again, “if you still want to hear it.”

“You’re Agatha Harkness,” Wanda says without hesitation, without even thinking about it.

“Yes.”

“You’re the old witch Steve sent me to find.”

“Yes.”

Wanda stares at her.  She takes in Agnes’s – Agatha’s – appearance.  Oh, she thinks, and then Oh again.  “But you’re not old,” she says, bringing her eyes up to Agnes’s again.  “Is this an illusion, or....”  Her voice trails off, unsure how to put words to her thoughts.

Agnes chuckles, and her gaze drops.  “Not an illusion.”  She spreads her hands out in front of her.  “This is me, hon.”  Her gaze returns to Wanda’s, hesitant.  “This will be you, too, in a few centuries.”

“In a few…,” Wanda echoes, not comprehending.  She shakes her head.  “How old are you?”  Then she holds her hand up.  “Don’t answer that.”  Because she doesn’t want to know.  Because she can’t know.  “What do you mean me, too?”

“We’re witches, Wanda.”  Agnes’s smile fades, and her gaze drops to her fingers again.  “We don’t age like other people.”  A dry chuckle escapes her lips.  “The people who made that serum for your friend Steve would love to get their hands on another one of us.  We’re a fascinating study.”

There’s a weight to those words.  Normally, coming from Agnes, Wanda would reach over and attempt to provide the same comfort that Agnes has always provided her, but right now, she’s too upset, too confused.  There’s too much.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?”

Wanda opens her mouth to deny it, then she shuts it just as quickly.  Her teeth grit together, but she has to admit, “No.”  She hates that about herself, too.  “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“And if I told you the truth about who I was – if you hadn’t believed me – would you have stayed and learned anything from me?” Agnes continues, her tone still that same soft and smooth.

She must have expected this conversation, Wanda thinks to herself.  She must have known, coming here, that this would come up.

And she came anyway.

Wanda thinks over everything Agnes – Agatha – has told her, and she takes a deep breath in.  “And maybe…you didn’t want any of my friends to know your secret either,” she says, putting things together.  “Right?”

“My powers are not for sale, Wanda.”  Agnes’s tone grows rough and steely.  “I trust you, dear, and Steve knew the moment he saw me.  But your friends are unknown, and what I have learned in my centuries of life, hon, is that teams like this, led by governments like this one?  They will rip you to pieces to get what they want before they even think about what’s best for you.  Before they even think about what you want.”  Her gaze drops.  “It was never personal, dear.  I only meant—”

“—to take care of yourself.”  Wanda reaches over, hesitates, and then places her hand atop both of Agnes’s.  She understands what it is, to need to protect herself.  She’s still pissed, but she gets it.  “You don’t want to be experimented on,” she says.  “It is not a particularly good experience.”  She licks her lips.  Part of her wants to return to the lie, but Agnes – Agatha – is right.  She would never have believed her, not unless something like this happened.  So instead, she says, “You won’t…you won’t lie to me about anything else, will you?”

Agnes shakes her head.  “Not like this, hon.  Not like this.”

“Okay.”  Wanda reaches over and brushes her finger along Agnes’s jaw.  She considers it for a moment and then kisses her gently a forgiveness given without words.  When Agnes kisses her back, she can’t help but smile.  Then she asks, voice soft, “You weren’t…you weren’t lying about any of this, were you?”

“No.”  Agnes brushes her nose against Wanda’s.  “I couldn’t if I tried.”

Wanda kisses her again, pressing her against the mattress as she curls against her again.  “Oh,” she murmurs, turning away and nodding to the room.  “This is my bedroom.  I think you already knew that, though.”

“Mmmm.”  Agnes places a hand on Wanda’s waist.  “Your bedroom.  Your bed.”  She tugs Wanda closer.  “Don’t you want to take advantage—”

It would be easy – so easy – to turn into Agnes and give in.  In fact, Wanda nearly does, murmuring, “Nessie,” in a feigned tone of annoyance as she turns to her, only to stop and blink down at her.  “You don’t mind that, do you?  Nessie?  Or should I call you Agatha?”

“Nessie’s fine, hon,” Agnes says with an impatient whine.  “Now why don’t you—”

“And it’s the end of the year!”  Wanda sits back up.  “Did we miss the change over?”

Agnes slumps back against Wanda’s pillows with a groan.  “And here I thought—”

“Agnes.”  Wanda slaps her arm.  “What time is it?”

“Like you don’t have a clock in your bedroom—”

“Agnes, if you didn’t wake me up before midnight—”

Agnes sighs.  “We have five minutes.”  She glances over to the clock literally sitting on the table set next to Wanda’s bed.  “See?  Five minutes.”  She gestures to it with one hand and then slumps back on the bed with a wicked grin.  “Which means five minutes to do whatever we—”

Wanda doesn’t even wait for the end of the sentence.  She grabs Agnes and drags her out of the bedroom.  “We will celebrate the incoming year with my friends, just like we intended.  You will not take this from me, Nessie.”  She only pauses briefly when she enters the room, when her gaze flicks to Steve’s.  He gives her a subtle nod, which is more than she expected.  His gaze moves to Agnes before he sighs.

It’s not one big happy family, maybe, but it looks like he, at least, understands.  Maybe, as a warrior who submitted himself to being an experiment, that’s different for him than it is for Wanda, who did the same thing for the same reasons and was treated entirely differently – and maybe that’s a third thing entirely from Agnes, who would rather not be used in the same way.  But he hasn’t made them leave, has he?

So that seems good.

~

The countdown begins only a few moments later, and in that first moment of the new year, Wanda pulls Agnes against her and kisses her.  She’s afraid, a little bit, of what the others will think, but for once, she doesn’t care.  Funny, how she can not care and still be afraid.

Sam whoops.  Natasha gives her a knowing nod and a small smile after.  Steve meets her eyes, grits his teeth, and then looks away.  Vision looks shocked.

But Wanda doesn’t take her eyes off of Agnes, and before she kisses her again, she murmurs, “Now we can break in my bedroom.”  She grins as Agnes’s eyes light up and isn’t surprised at all when Agnes cloaks them in her own violet magic, when midkiss she finds herself pressing the older witch into her own mattress, and she can’t help but chuckle.  “Someone is—”

“Hush.”

Agnes presses her lips to Wanda’s, and she falls silent.

(If this is how her year begins, she can’t imagine how wonderful the rest of it will be.)

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #instigation with wanda and co #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #steve rogers #natasha romanov #sam wilson #vision mcu #mcu vision #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

Agatha Meets Scratchy

Summary: Agatha Harkness has never been one for pets.

Fortunately for her, Scratchy can't really be called a pet.

Rating: M for triggering material (see below). TW: Animal Harm and Descriptions of a Burning Human.

AO3

Agatha Harkness has never been one for pets.

If asked, she couldn’t say just when it started.  Perhaps it was when she was a child, when she and her sisters looked after the few animals their little farm had.  Chickens weren’t pets, sheep weren’t pets, a horse was not a pet.  Her brother, Nathaniel, constantly asked for a puppy of his own, like his friends, but by then, Agatha already saw a pet as simply another hassle in their day-to-day life.  She had food to cook, animals with an actual use to look after, clothes to clean, babies to look after – not even her own children, who wouldn’t be born until much later.  For the most part, she hadn’t resented all that she had to do.

By then, her sisters were training to become leaders of their coven – Charity directly, Prudence just in case something should happen to Charity – which meant most of Charity’s time was with their mother, involved in coven stuff, or with Agatha, teaching her the dark magic that their mother would have forbidden her, the magic that was Agatha’s naturally and that would consume her if she didn’t have any proper teaching.  Prudence spent some time with their mother, but she’d also been married to one of the men from Salem and had her own house to look after.  It was her daughter who Agatha often looked after, while Prudence followed along with Charity and their mother as needed.

Of course, Nathaniel helped out around the house as much as he could, but he was often away with Nicholas, playing around the docks, looking for their father’s ship.

After she believed all of them to be dead, after Nicholas brought her across the sea to Europe and married her, after Agatha started her own house with her own children – Nicholas, for his father, and Nathaniel, for her brother – she’d had even less time to consider keeping a pet.  She was alone at the house most of the time; Nicholas was a sailor like her own father had been, like her brother once planned to be.  Sure, she kept a few chickens and sheep as she had in the colonies, but again, they weren’t pets.  They were there to provide sustenance and sustainability.

Magic could do the same thing, if she was better at it.  It could have kept both of her sons alive, too, if she’d been better, instead of letting one of them die a few months after childbirth.  It could have alerted her to Charity’s appearance, it could have let her know Charity’s true intentions, it could have prevented the murder of her still living son—

No, Agatha Harkness has never been one for pets.  She’d seen others with their trained birds singing prettily for them in cages with their wings clipped so that they cannot fly away, and she’d felt worse for the birds than she’d felt proud for their owner.  And with her own constant wanderlust, rarely staying in any one place for more than a select few months at a time (unless something – or, more often, someone – compelled her to stay longer), having a pet would be detrimental at best.  She can’t just lug an animal around everywhere with her.  That wouldn’t be fair to the pet, not to mention how much effort she would need to put into finding ways to make sure the pet is okay and will be cared for and safe and. just.  no.

All of this, of course, was before she ran over a wild rabbit with a lawnmower.

~

Now, Agatha Harkness has seen her fair share of mangled bodies.  Human, animal, other.  So seeing the still breathing rabbit after hearing the chunk of it beneath the blades of her lawnmower isn’t anything new to her.  The misfortune is that it is still breathing, that it hadn’t died quickly and with as little pain as possible, that it’s still left like this, dying, in pain, staring out across the lawn.

Maybe, if it wasn’t the anniversary of the day her sister killed her son, Agatha would have left well enough alone and used her magic to end its suffering instead of what she did instead.  But her mind is already full of images she doesn’t want to relive, of shoving herself through the walls of a burning building to find her son with scorched and burning flesh, her nose full of the scent of it – they say there’s something of burnt pig to it, but it’s so much worse, an acrid smell that she’s never been able to forget, no matter how hard she has tried (and she has tried a lot, up to and including begging her dearest friend to wipe her memories of her family so that she doesn’t have to live with this anymore (they refused)).  So seeing this, too, after everything, on a day when she is already at her most vulnerable and had only been mowing the lawn to give her mind something else on which to focus—

Agatha doesn’t even touch the rabbit.  She has no need to do so.  Yet she calls on the magic that she now knows, the magic she did not know when she most needed it, and stitches the rabbit’s organs, veins, flesh, fur back together, without leaving so much as a speck of blood on the uncut blades of grass around them.

The rabbit runs from her in a panic.

Of course, it does.  Given the choice, she would run from herself, too.

Afterwards, Agatha thinks nothing of it.  Point of fact, she forgets about it almost immediately, deciding that maybe today is not the best day to mow the rest of the lawn and instead hiding the mower inside where she might never find it again.  Literally never, because after far more than one to many shots of vodka that feels like water, she teleports away.

Tomorrow, she’ll blame it on her wanderlust.

Today, collapsing, sobbing, in the arms of the only friend she has ever truly loved since leaving her husband, Agatha speaks only the truth.

(Tomorrow, she’ll pretend nothing happened at all.)

~

It takes fifty years before Agatha returns to the scene of the crime, and she only returns then to set the house to sell, and she’s only selling the thing because she’s finally realized that she’ll never have any desire to live there again, no matter how much she has convinced herself over the last fifty years that she will.

It takes fifty years, and that same exact rabbit notices her and sits on the rotten welcome mat on her doorstep, waiting.

Agatha stares at the rabbit.  She stares at the rabbit and she blinks and she knows it’s the same rabbit because as much as she wants to forget, that image, too, has infiltrated her nightmares.  Part of her waited so long before returning because she knew the rabbit would be dead by now, dead of old age or from a cat attack or from something that didn’t mean her.

But here it is.  Sitting on her doorstep.  Nose twitching as she approaches.

It doesn’t run.

Agatha kneels down and holds her hand out to it.  The rabbit hops to her, sniffs her fingertips, and then looks up at her with its ears laid long against its back.  “I’m sorry,” she says, meeting its dark eyes as much as she can.  “I was trying to fix my mistake, not….”

Not whatever it is she’s actually done.

Her lips press together.  She can’t even know for sure if the rabbit understands her or not.  On an instinct, she reaches out, touching the rabbit’s mind with her own, and finds only confusion and curiosity and a timid sense of wariness.  Her mind communicates warmth and gentleness and a home, if he wants it, provided he allows her one more spell.  He hops into her mind, and the spell is set, wiping any and all viruses he might have from him, preventing him from ever getting any of them.  It takes more than she’d like to admit – which is why she’s never used it on a person, where it might very well kill her – but this creature, perhaps, deserves it.  For what she’d done to him.

Agatha runs fingers along his ears, and the rabbit plops, content, in her hands.

~

Eventually, Agatha calls him Scratchy.

It’s the closest approximation she can find in human words for the name he calls himself.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #agatha harkness #senor scratchy #mcu #wandavision #i mean - they aren't SUPER descriptive #but i'm just gonna #slap an M rating on just in case

[aparticularbandit]

Instigation: Chapter Two

Summary: Steve sends Wanda to seek out an old witch he once knew, and eventually, Wanda brings said old witch back to meet her family.

Wanda Maximoff/Agatha Harkness

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter / next chapter

End of July, 2015.

Wanda clomps her way up the staircase to Agnes’s apartment complex, shoves open the doorway (there should be a lock, but she suspects it’s broken), and then clomps further down the hallway and up the many flights of stairs to Agnes’s apartment, dripping all the way.  A part of her hopes that the water dripping off of her will actually clean the carpets enough that the stench of dust and mildew and, eventually, smoke will go away, but the longer she stands in one spot, just outside of Agatha’s apartment, waiting for her to answer the door, the more she’s aware that the water is somehow making the already horrible smell worse, like it’s activating some sort of long hidden mold.

It’s somewhere between the middle and the end of July, and it should be devastatingly hot outside, even in the storm, but it isn’t, and it’s even colder in here, where weary fans beat stagnant air and, somehow, cool it.  Wanda shivers.  Wraps her arms around herself in an attempt to warm herself.  Remembers that her clothes are just as soaked as she is and thus not only don’t provide more warmth but, somehow, only make her colder.  She raises her hand to rap her knuckles on Agnes’s door again only for that door to open at just the right moment.

Agnes catches Wanda’s fist with her hand and gently strokes her thumb across Wanda’s fingers.  “Didn’t you hear, hon?  Storm’s coming.  No training today.”

“Storm’s already here, Agnes,” Wanda croaks out.  She coughs once – twice – and regrets tugging her hand from Agnes’s to cover her mouth.  “I....”  Her gaze shifts away from Agnes’s curious, searching one.  “Your complex is shit,” she finally says in her rough accent.  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh, hon.”  Agnes’s tone aches in a way that draws warmth from Wanda’s chest, which should help her feel better but really only serves to make her feel more nervous.  “I’m a witch.  I’ve lived through much worse.”  Then she leans forward, hides her lips behind one hand, and whispers to her, as though anyone else in the empty hallway might be listening, “And what with the Sanctum next door…they tend to take good care of their neighbors.”

Wanda nods in acceptance of her own foolishness.  She tucks wet strands of hair behind her ear, pulls her fingers away wet.  “I…I should go.  You have everything taken care of.”

But as she turns to leave, Agnes grips her shoulder.  “Don’t you dare, super star.  It’s raining cats and dogs out there, and you’re already wet as a drowned shrew!”  The last word catches in her throat, sounds slightly more frantic than the rest, but it’s one word in a whirlwind, and while Wanda notices it at first, it gets lost in the shuffle, especially as Agnes tries to tug her into the apartment.

“Hey!”

Agnes’s face falls as Wanda whirls around, and the spark that normally lights up her bright blue eyes fades.  “You don’t want to stay with me.”  The words aren’t bombs, but the wounded way Agnes says them might as well be, the way it sinks into Wanda’s skin so much more easily than the rain soaking her does.

The problem is that Wanda very much does want to stay with Agnes.  She’s wanted to stay with Agnes pretty much every day since the moment they met.  But despite Steve’s insistence that she track the Agatha Harkness who no longer lives here down, and despite his more than excessive joy that she’d found someone who could teach her witchcraft (as Wanda now knows her “power” truly is), even he had still been hesitant about the idea of Wanda staying anywhere other than the complex, even if Agnes is her teacher.  She knows that hesitancy has less to do with her and more to do with Agnes, but sometimes….

Sometimes, Wanda feels like the other Avengers only act like they trust her.  Like maybe, in reality, they only kept her because she was powerful – not because she had nowhere else to go, but because she was just another person with powers that they couldn’t let slip through their grasp, because if they did, maybe she’d turn on them again.  And Agnes – even if she’d been honest about her, they have no way of knowing that and no way of knowing Agnes well enough to trust her.

Not more than they already are, of course.

Sometimes, Wanda thinks she can just catch a glimpse of Natasha outside, spying on them.  But there’s no way that could be true.  Sure, Natasha might be spying on them, but if she was, Wanda would never catch her.  Still, it’s…it’s the idea of it.

“There are…there are people waiting on me,” Wanda stutters out, her gaze dropping to Agnes’s hand where it’s fallen to her side.  “They’d….”  Her head tilts to one side.  “They’d be upset if I didn’t…if I stayed.”

“You tell yourself that, hon, but don’t expect me to believe it.”  Agnes lets out a disheartened sigh.  She glances out the nearby window, and while Wanda doesn’t follow her gaze, she can still see the still darkening storm clouds gathering in the sky.  “You should get going,” she says, gaze dropping even more.  “Storm’s only going to get worse before it gets better.”

“Agnes.”

Agnes just shakes her head.  “Don’t mind me, hon.  Get going before you get stuck here.”

Before I get—  Wanda’s eyes light up.  She takes Agnes’s hand in her own and gives it a gentle, if slippery, squeeze.  “Agnes, you’re a genius.”  She wants to kiss her for it – to kiss her forehead, to bring the hand in hers up to her lips, to kiss her the way she’s wanted to kiss her for a while now and simply hasn’t – but despite that longing, she doesn’t.  In spite of herself, though, she does let her fingers trace Agnes’s chin before tilting her head back so that she can meet her eyes.  (This only makes her want to kiss her more.  She suppresses that feeling.)  “If I’m stuck,” Wanda says, trying desperately not to grin, “I can stay.”

“Wanda, dear, I don’t want you to be stuck if you want to—”  Then Agnes’s eyes light up, too, as though suddenly understanding what Wanda is saying.  A grin spreads across her lips, the sort of smirk that always happens just before she gets into mischief.  “We’ll just have to make sure you’re stuck as a pig.”

Wanda blinks twice.  “I don’t know what that means, but I hope it’s good.”

Agnes just winks, takes Wanda’s hand in her own again, interlaces their fingers, and tugs her into her apartment before shutting and locking the door behind them.

~

“What does she mean she’s stuck?”

Wanda presses her lips together in a thin line.  For all that she hopes Steve doesn’t have her on speaker phone, there’s absolutely no assurance that he doesn’t – and even if he doesn’t, he has very clearly updated the others around him to her situation.  That particular quip came from Sam, with whom she has a fairly strained relationship.  She hears other voices in the background – loud enough that she can make out Vision and Natasha, but not so loud as Sam, not so loud that she can make out exactly what they’re saying.

Finally, Steve says on the other end, “We’re coming to get you.”

“No, you’re not.”  Wanda’s gaze grows steely, even though that doesn’t help when she’s on the phone.  “I will be safe here with Agnes, and if something happens, the Sanctum will take care of it.”  Again, the noisy silence as Steve relays what she’s saying to the group around her, and this time, before he says anything, she tells him, “You can put me on speaker phone, Steve.”

“I’d rather not.”

Wanda takes a sharp breath in.  She resumes her pacing, going back and forth in Agnes’s kitchen, wet pants slapping on the now quite slippery tile.  “Steve,” she hisses, her accent growing heavier in her frustration.  “Ask Natasha.  I know she’s been casing the complex.”  She ignores how the other end falls into complete silence.  “Tell him, Natasha.”

There’s a muffled sound as the phone changes hands.  “You weren’t supposed to know.”  Natasha’s voice, much warmer than Steve’s, but not any better at this moment.

“I’m not a child.”  Wanda lets out a little huff.  “You might give me a long leash, but it’s still a—”

“There’s a difference between a leash and being careful, Wanda.”  Natasha cuts through before she can finish.  “We don’t know this Agnes—”

“—and Steve doesn’t know Agatha, either,” Wanda snaps back, “but he didn’t mind my seeing her.”  Her gaze lifts just enough to meet Agnes’s, too late to notice the glimmer of amusement at the mention of the other name.

Agnes sits perched atop one of her kitchen stools, a cup of tea in one hand.  There’s the slightest possibility that she’s only listening to Wanda’s side of the conversation, but in all honesty, if Steve doesn’t want to keep their conversation private, then Wanda doesn’t particularly either.  As she looks, Agnes lifts her fingers just enough to tap next to her eyes, but Wanda shakes her head.  Sure, she could try to influence them through the phone, but then she would fall into exactly what she knows they’re scared of her doing.  Agnes just gives a little shrug and returns to sipping her tea.

“Wanda,” Natasha says, “if you want to stay, I won’t stop you.”  There’s a squabble in the background, but there’s also the sharp click-clacking of heels on tile, the squabbling growing softer as Natasha appears to walk away from them.  “You’re an adult.  You can make your own choices.”

“Thank you—”

“But I expect,” Natasha continues as if Wanda hasn’t said anything, “the next time you want to stay with your friend, you don’t use some excuse like being stuck.”  Her voice grows soft and dark.  “Don’t lie to us.  We deserve better than that.”

Wanda flushes with a shame that she knows Natasha can’t see, just like she can’t see the stern look she knows Natasha would be giving her right now, if she were there.  “I understand.”

“You are an adult, and if you want to spend time with someone—”

“I understand,” Wanda repeats, her gaze dropping.  She stamps her foot on the tile, and it catches on the puddle beneath her before she rights herself.  “I’ll…I’ll see you tomorrow.  After the storm passes.”

Natasha gives a little hum.  “After the storm passes.”

Wanda flips her phone shut and stuffs it into her pocket.  She takes a steadying breath, hoping it will calm her, and turns on her heel to—

To do nothing, because she immediately slips on the wet tile and falls backward.

Before her head hits the harsh tile floor, however, strong – Wanda didn’t realize how strong – hands catch her.  She looks straight up into Agnes’s bright blue eyes, breathing heavily, and thinks….  Well, it doesn’t much matter what she thinks.

Agnes offers her a smug, yet somehow soft, smile.  “I’ve got you, twinkle toes.”  She gently rights her, and when Wanda slips on the wet tiles again, she holds her steady, both hands on either side of Wanda’s waist.  Then she chuckles and leans close enough to whisper with her breath hot on Wanda’s ear, “Falling for me, hot stuff?”

“Um.”

Wanda swallows hard before she turns in Agnes’s grasp, and she bites her lower lip hard before she looks into Agnes’s eyes again.  “You.  Um.”  Her lips press together, and she shakes her head, unable to get any words out.

“Well,” Agnes purrs, “why don’t we get you out of those sopping clothes and warmed up?”  She seems to ignore the flush suddenly scarleting Wanda’s cheeks as she gently – and carefully – leads her out of the kitchen, holding Wanda in place whenever she slips again.  “I think a nice hot shower would be good for you, hon.”

“I don’t have anything to wear.”  Wanda turns to Agnes, blushes, and drops her gaze.  “I-I-I don’t have anything to wear,” she repeats.  It’s the worst thing of all, how sometimes when Agnes touches her – even when they’re practicing – she falls all apart like this.

But Agnes gently lifts her chin and gives her a wry smile.  “We���re witches, dear.  I think we’ll be able to come up with something.”

~

In the shower, Wanda has a lot of alone time to think.

Well.  Not a lot.  But enough.

So when she gets out of Agnes’s singular bathroom, wearing one of Agnes’s shirts (perhaps the one she’d worn when Wanda first met her), wrapped in the sweet scent of Agnes’s soap and shampoo, Wanda makes a decision.  Perhaps it isn’t the right one.  Perhaps she’s simply tired.

But Natasha was right.  Wanda is an adult.  If she wants something, she should say it, and she shouldn’t manipulate circumstances to try and get things the way she wants without doing something about it first.  That certainly isn’t the way she likes people to treat her, and it’s certainly not the way she should treat other people.

Especially not people she thinks she might like.

Wanda finds Agnes sitting on her couch, a cup of tea set on the table next to her, and sits down next to her.  When Agnes turns to her with bright eyes, Wanda places a finger over her lips, stopping her from saying anything.  This is supposed to help.  It should make it easier for her.  But it doesn’t.

She should say something.

Wanda tries to – the words get caught in her throat; her mouth opens and closes, and nothing comes out.  Then her gaze drops.  She takes in the light smattering of freckles across the bridge of Agnes’s nose, so light that she wouldn’t be able to see them if she wasn’t this close, and then her gaze drops lower, focusing on Agnes’s lips as they spread into a smirk.

“Here, hon,” Agnes whispers around Wanda’s finger.  “Let me help you.”  She kisses it gently, and Wanda pulls her finger back, gaze returning to Agnes’s eyes and searching them gently.  Then she sits up a little straighter, lets her own gaze drop to Wanda’s lips, and then tilts her head to one side before kissing her.

Agnes is surprisingly gentle.

When she breaks away, Wanda can’t stop herself from leaning in for another kiss, hungry for the taste of her on her tongue.  She smiles when Agnes hums for her.  “This is okay, then,” she murmurs, brushing her nose against Agnes’s, “is it?”

Agnes just chuckles, a deep, throaty sort of thing.  “Wanda, hon.  At some point, you were going to need help with this attraction between us.”  She kisses her again, a soft peck of a thing.  “Why do you think I conjured the storm?”

“You…?”  Wanda’s eyes widen with understanding, and then she, too, laughs.  “You’ll have to teach me that one.”  Then she snakes her hair through Agnes’s wild hair the way she’s wanted to do since they met, tugs her toward her, and kisses her the way she’s wanted to be kissed, the way she’s wanted to kiss her.

And when Agnes kisses her back, it feels like the only good thing that’s happened in a very, very long time.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #instigation with wanda and co #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #steve rogers #natasha romanov #vision mcu #mcu vision #sam wilson #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

For Fake: Chapter Four

Summary: America lied about having a girlfriend to get her moms off her back, but when they want to meet said girlfriend, she asks her good friend Viv to step in and help.

Viv Vision/America Chavez

Chapter Rating: G. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

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notanandroid: I cannot meet on the 26th.  Father has the date marked for something. punchesstars: for wut notanandroid: I do not know.  He will not tell me. notanandroid: Every time I ask, he says that it is a surprise. punchesstars: oh punchesstars: cool

punchesstars: the 22 ok? punchesstars: mom’s birthday’s the 21 so not then punchesstars: she’ll be SO distracted notanandroid: Yes.  We do not have any plans. punchesstars: cool punchesstars: cu then

notanandroid: You are certain that you want me to be myself? notanandroid: You are certain that will not make things too complicated? punchesstars: ur fine punchesstars: i like u punchesstars: & ur a shit liar notanandroid: I can reasonably deceive your parents.  Father has told me that Wanda is extremely gullible. punchesstars: i dont wanna kno notanandroid: They were in a relationship before my father created me. punchesstars: ew punchesstars: i said i dont wanna kno punchesstars: y’d u say that punchesstars: ew ew ew ew ew punchesstars: i need brain bleach viv notanandroid: I do not think they make that. notanandroid: I do not think this needs to be said, but please do not drink bleach.

~

Viv hovers down to America’s house with a feeling of woeful unpreparedness.  Perhaps if asked, they don’t need to talk about how they met; her moms should already know that one.  They can refer back to the diner for their “first date” as well.  But she hopes neither of them asks how America asked her out – or how she asked America out – because this is something they have never discussed.  She hopes they don’t ask how they each knew the other liked them.  Even more, she hopes neither asks how she knew she liked America.

She still hasn’t decided how to answer that question.

As her feet just touch down on their front porch, Viv reaches out to ring their doorbell and then hesitates.  Woefully unprepared shouldn’t leave her feeling as anxious and nervous as she feels.  It shouldn’t.  And yet her stomach still acts as though there are exposed livewires tumbling about inside it, as though they keep brushing against the rest of her insides.

It’s not as painful as it sounds.

Still.

Viv tugs on the flowing lace edges of her long shirt as if they were on a skirt.  They might as well be, since she’s just in that long shirt and leggings.  It isn’t quite a dress, per say, or at least clothes like it aren’t marketed as dresses, but she’s gotten one that’s big enough to be worn that way regardless, all soft and knitted and in her signature Crayola green.  She likes this sweater.  It has golden threads woven through it here and there that sparkle when they catch the light.  She tucks her hair behind one ear, tugs on her sleeves until her thumbs fit through each of the holes designed for them, reconsiders how she looks – reconsiders looking like herself, like a synthezoid and not a human – and very nearly shifts her appearance, although America insisted otherwise, before the front door opens.

She didn’t ring the doorbell.

It doesn’t matter – the door’s open, and Agatha stands there on the other side of it, fingers tapping on the door, nails gleaming a deep violet in the porch light.  Strictly speaking, they’ve never met, but Viv recognizes her easily enough from the way too many files she’d scanned through in preparation for this meeting.  (She tells herself it was simply research for a mission, but the truth is it’s the same sort of research she might have done if America was actually her girlfriend and she actually wanted to do well with her parents.)

From the way Agatha’s head tilts to one side, it’s clear that she recognizes Viv, too.  She doesn’t say anything at first, but then her eyes light up and a wicked, wicked grin spreads across her lips.  “Oh, so it’s you.”

“I am uncertain of what you mean.”

“You’re the girlfriend, aren’t you?”  Agatha’s grin widens so much that her tongue starts to peek between her teeth.  Then she turns and shouts into the house.  “Wanda, babe, you owe me thirty bucks!”

The call comes from inside the house: “What?”

“I guessed right!” Agatha calls back.  “You owe me, hon!”

Viv’s face is already scarlet.  That is a feature of being a synthezoid.  It is a fortunate feature, because that means when her cheeks heat with her embarrassment, it is impossible to note the difference.  “I did not even ring the doorbell,” she mutters under her breath.

“Oh, right, that.”  Agatha turns back.  “We have one of those spy cams.  Lets us know someone’s at the door before they even do anything.”  She steps out of the house and taps at the camera set in the doorbell.  “Smile!  You’re on candid camera!”

I hate this, Viv thinks, and then, I really hate this, she thinks again, and then, It’s good that this is all feigned because I would hate this more if I had to live through it more often.  Still, she can see some of America’s snark mimicked in Agatha’s words, and as much as she hates it, that calms her.  They’re not the same – they aren’t even biologically related, and America’s brainwaves aren’t a combination of Wanda’s and Agatha’s the way that Viv’s are of her father’s and her mother’s – but they still resemble each other.  It’s beautiful.

Then there comes a pounding on the stairs so loud that Viv can hear it outside, and exactly thirty-point-five-six-five seconds later, America appears halfway down the stairs.  “Viv?”  She grabs the railing about a quarter of the way from the floor and jumps over the side before skidding on stockinged feet to the front door.  Then she pushes Agatha out of the way.  “She’s my girlfriend.  You can’t have her.”

Viv blinks twice.

“America, how many times have I told you not to jump the railing?”  Wanda’s voice cuts through everything, blatant before she’s even visible, and then she’s there, walking out of the kitchen in an outfit that looks like a softer, more grown-up version of Viv’s own: cream sweater dress compared with Viv’s matrix green over large sweater, both with longer than normal sleeves but Wanda’s with extra folds about her collar as well; caramel leggings compared with Viv’s onyx ones, a deeper color that exudes warmth as opposed to Viv’s flat black, which seems to absorb it; and then the glow ups: dark chocolate boots much classier than Viv’s half-tied red Converse and a deep brown belt with a golden buckle cinched about her waist, highlighting it, accenting it, where Viv wears no belt at all.

It’s more than a bit of a mimicry, even if unintended, and a part of Viv glances to Agatha and America to see if they will parallel each other the same way that she does with Wanda.  But while both seem a little more dressed down, that’s the only thing they have in common.  America has her standard denim jacket, of course (surprising, since Wanda has always given off a don’t wear jackets inside the house sort of vibe), but her jeans and t-shirt look like anything she could wear any day, nothing special at all.  Agatha, meanwhile, seems to have decided to fit the sweater theme – only hers is actually a well fitted deep purple sweater pulled over a collared shirt of a sharper shade of purple (only visible from its collar poking out and resting atop the sweater’s).  Black slacks aren’t a grown-up version of jeans, no matter what anyone says, and even if Agatha wanted to look more adult, that effect is destroyed by the way her sleeves are pushed up to her elbows.  Even though they both have their hair pulled back, America’s is a much higher ponytail with strands pulled out and hanging about her ears, while Agatha’s is a much messier up-do.

Wanda storms – the heels of her boots clacking on the floor – over to Agatha and glares at her.  “This is your fault.  You taught her how to—”

“You like jumping the railing, too, hon,” Agatha replies with a wave of her hand.  “Don’t discriminate.”  Then she gestures to Viv with one hand.  “Told you.  Pay up.”

“Told me wha—”  Wanda’s eyes light on Viv, and her expression softens.  At least, it does at first.  Then her eyes widen as she realizes who’s standing there.  Her head slowly lilts backward.  “You’re—”

“My girlfriend,” America interjects.  She bites her lower lip and crosses her arms.  “Got a problem with that?”

For a moment longer, Viv stays on the porch.  She sees Wanda’s expression shift between a thousand and one minute differences, each saying and explaining an entirely different aspect of her reaction, before settling, finally, on a mixture of concern and wary acceptance.  She lies, then, when she says, “No, of course not,” because everything about that rapidly shifting and schooling says that this expression, the one she wears, is nothing more than a mask.

Viv knows because her own mother often tried to do the same thing and failed, because her mother trained herself to wear that mask at every possible moment, only letting it fall when—

Well.  Her mother’s brainwaves were a mimicry of Wanda’s, after all.  So of course she should—

“Why don’t you come in from the cold, hon,” Agatha says, gesturing Viv in with one hand.  “It’s freezing out there.”

On second glance, Agatha’s blue eyes shine brighter than Wanda’s, although whether they sparkle with mischief or congeniality, Viv cannot tell.  So instead, she looks to America, who offers her a gentle, if embarrassed grin, and who takes her hand and tugs her inside.  She assumes the embarrassment is of her parents, but in all honesty?  She cannot tell.

~

Dinner goes as smoothly as could be hoped for, although that seems to be on account of it being mostly silent.  Well, mostly silent for three of the four of them – it only took a single compliment from Viv, followed by a long, low groan from America, before Agatha launched into an intricate explanation of the dish in question, who she learned it from, how many years it took for her to perfect it, and then, without prompting, explaining the exact same thing for each of the other dishes.  Despite her audible groan, America gives Viv a thumbs up beneath the table – without knowing, she’d walked into perhaps the best way to make sure the dinner conversation was on something other than them – and while Viv found most of Agatha’s stories engaging, she glanced over to Wanda from time to time and found her somewhere between entertained and annoyed, depending on the story.

And once, exactly once, Viv glanced over to Wanda and found her looking straight at her.  Wanda didn’t flush at being caught out, although Viv did, and instead holds Viv’s gaze just long enough to give her a gentle smile.  In the end, Viv looked away before Wanda did, and the next time she checked, Wanda had returned to eating, as though nothing happened at all.

After dinner, Agatha suggests they move into the living room, but Wanda touches Viv’s arm gently and gestures for her to follow her.  Viv follows, despite her suspicions, only to stand with Wanda, alone, in the kitchen.  It still smells strongly of the food Agatha prepared for them, only in here, where she can smell everything at once, it hits her like that first breath of air after being held underwater – a deep, deep, desperate breath followed by guttural gasping from too much.

“You’re dating America,” Wanda asks, but she doesn’t say it like a question.

Viv looks down at her hands and clasps them together.  “Yes.”

“You’re dating America,” Wanda repeats.

“Yes.”  Viv continues to look down at her hands.

“You’re dating America—”

“It does not matter how many times you say it or which words you italicize, it does not make the statement any less true.”  Viv fiddles one thumb up and over the other.

For a moment, Wanda stays silent.  Then, “Italicize?” she echoes, her voice soft.

Viv shrugs.  “It seemed pertinent.”  She glances up and meets Wanda’s eyes.  When she looks human, her own are the same shade, that same emerald green, although Wanda’s feel darker than her own, which always spark with electric light.  Rough hewn emeralds against the matrix approximation thereof.  Maybe, if her mother had been human, her eyes would have looked much the same.  Maybe this, too, is something they inherited from their originator.  “You have a problem with this.”

“I’m just surprised.”  Wanda crosses her arms.  Her gaze lifts and focuses on the bright yellow gem situated in the very center of Viv’s forehead.

In another life, this gem, situated in her father’s forehead, was the Mind Stone, but in his recreation and subsequent creation of herself and the rest of their family, it’s nothing more than a memory of what he once was and a reminder of whose she is.  The Solar Gem doesn’t need to be in the center of her forehead.  It doesn’t need to be this flashy or this bright, and it doesn’t need to be one of the ways that she externally connects with some of her internal systems.  And yet her father has created her the same way he was created, with so many threads tied down to this singular gem.

Wanda stares at the gem and pain flickers through her eyes and she asks, gentle as she can, “When did you turn your emotional processors back on?”

“Father told you,” Viv says, but where once anger might have bubbled up inside her, she stays calm.  “He was not meant to tell anyone.  That was meant only for family.”

I am family.

Wanda doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t have to do so.  Her expression says it all for her.  “Viv,” she starts again, “when did you—”

“I did not.”  Viv averts her eyes.  “I have not.”

There’s a beat of silence after the admission.  Viv continues to avert her eyes, refusing to see the disappointment (or, worse, concern) in Wanda’s, still breathing in that tangled, overwhelming scent of too much food at once.  She glances up just enough to barely make out Wanda’s expression when Wanda says, “Then do you really think it’s a good idea to be dating—”

“Viv?”  America pops her head into the kitchen.  “Why’re you hiding in here?”  She catches sight of her mom, and her eyes narrow the slightest bit.  “Something the matter?”

“No,” Viv lies.  She meets Wanda’s eyes.  “Nothing is wrong.”  She waits a breath to see if Wanda will refute her, and when Wanda says nothing to either of them, she takes America’s hand in her own and follows her out of the kitchen.

America leans over as they walk the admittedly short hallway to the living room and hisses, “What was that about?”

“Nothing.”

Viv does not feel as though she has gotten any better at lying, although she has practiced, and her clear lack of skill is reflected towards her on America’s face when her friend who is a girl turns to her and gives her a blank stare.  The kind that says she will bring this up again later, when they’re alone, when she doesn’t think anyone will overhear them; the kind that says she will insist on it, even if Viv doesn’t want to talk about it at all.

That feeling of electric coils in the pit of her stomach returns, and Viv thinks that maybe, when America asked if she’d be her fake girlfriend, she should have said no.

~

At some point in the living room, Viv realizes that Wanda and Agatha had their own plans in motion, plans that were far more thought out and prepared than Viv and America’s had been.  Those plans, of course, were entirely reliant on letting Agatha talk while Wanda quietly took everything in – less what Agatha was saying and more Viv’s reactions, or how Viv and America might react together – and a part of Viv suspects that those plans were set into place the moment Agatha said she’d won their bet.  There might never have even been a bet – only plans within plans within plans and which one they might follow.

And by the end of everything, Viv feels as though they have failed.

“I believe I should be going,” Viv says finally, as the clock clicks closer to her curfew.  She turns to America, takes her friend’s hand in her own, and gives it a gentle squeeze.  “My father would not like it if I lingered too long.”

At her words, Agatha’s eyes light up.  “He doesn’t know where you are, does he, hon?  He’d let you stay later if he knew you were with your girlfriend—”

“Agatha!” America cuts her off, but Agatha just gives them both a huge wink.

Wanda, however, stands with a gentle, if feigned, smile on her face.  “Viv’s right.  I think we should—”  She stops herself with a yawn, which she covers with one hand.  Her smile droops afterward, but that sleepiness doesn’t quite reach her eyes.  “I’m sorry. It’s nearly past my bedtime.”

America shoots her a look.  “You don’t have a bedtime.”

Agatha winks again.

“Ew.”  America winces and stands, tugging Viv up with her.  “I don’t wanna hear any of that.  Ew ew ew ew ew.”  She starts to the door without another word – which was probably Wanda and Agatha’s intent, although Viv can’t know for sure.

Once they’re outside, America shuts the door behind them and gives Viv another look.  “No, seriously, what was Wanda doing with you earlier?” she asks without any sort of transition at all.  She crosses her arms.  “And don’t…don’t lie to me, okay?  Don’t say it was nothing when it definitely wasn’t nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing.”  Viv doesn’t meet her eyes.  Instead, she crosses her arms with a shiver she doesn’t need – she cannot feel the cold right now – and stares out at the snow-covered lawn in front of them, at the twinkling holiday lights threaded through the white picket fence.

“So what was it?” America asks, nudging her.

Viv shakes her head.  “It is unimportant.”  She turns to America with a small smile.  “Most importantly, it does not concern you.  It is only something about myself which your mother should not have known in the first place.  That is all.”

“Your dad?” America guesses, and when Viv nods, she scowls and kicks her foot at the ground.  “That sucks.”

“Perhaps.”  Viv gives a half-hearted shrug.  She waits to see if America will say anything else about that, but she doesn’t, and Viv doesn’t invite her to continue it.  In fact, she’d rather she didn’t know at all.  It isn’t any of her business.  Even if they were girlfriends – which they aren’t, and which she does not want – she wouldn’t want to tell her.

Life is just…easier this way.  Thinking about hard things, like her mother, and not feeling everything about them.  It’s simply easier not to feel.  And it’s not she doesn’t feel anything; it’s just…softer, somehow.  She needs softer.

And maybe it would have ended there, if Agatha hadn’t propped open one of the windows and stuck her head out.  “Kiss her!” she yells out.  “You’re standing under mistletoe!”

“No, we’re not.”  America doesn’t even look up.  “I ripped that thing down because you and Mom were smooching too much.”  She gives Viv a look and mouths ew again before sticking her tongue out with disgust.

“Oh.”  Agatha stares down at them.  “I didn’t realize.”  Her tone sounds too much like Viv’s mother.  It’s terrifying.  Then her head tilts to the side, and she waggles her fingers.  “Fixed it for you, hon.  Don’t thank me!”  She returns back inside the house as the mistletoe appears in a puff of violet magic.

America stares at the mistletoe with wide eyes.  “Uh, no.”  She shakes her head and stands back, palms out.  “You don’t have to.  Nope.”

“They’re paying attention.”  Viv doesn’t need to see America’s moms to know that what she just said is true.  “It’s a test.”  She looks down at her hand, rubs her thumbnail against the bad of her forefinger.  “I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t mind.”

“That’s not the point!”

Viv glances up to see the bright flush coloring America’s face, the same embarrassed expression as before only magnified etched into her features, and gives another shrug.  “Then don’t.  And have Agatha berate you for not doing anything, despite the opportunity being right there, while Wanda doubts whether we’re actually a couple at all—”

America kisses her.

….

Viv is fairly certain that America only kisses her to get her to stop talking.  She won’t admit it to herself, but that was, in fact, her point.  To make America so flustered that she’d act.  It doesn’t mean anything, after all, and it doesn’t need to be anything.

But it’s nice, she thinks.  It’s nice, to be kissed.

America stops with her cheeks an even darker red than they were before.  “There,” she mutters.  “Fine.  They got what they needed.”  She doesn’t look up and actively avoids Viv’s gaze.  “I’m gonna…I’m gonna go.  So you can make your curfew.  Or whatever.”

In the most girlfriend-like manner she’s had the entire time, Viv leans over and kisses America’s cheek.  “I will text you.  Later.”

“Yeah.  Sure.  Whatever.”

But even though America turns away from her, even though her hands clench together into tiny fists, she doesn’t go inside until Viv has hovered enough out of reach that she cannot see her anymore, until Viv has flown far enough away that she doesn’t hear the door slam.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #for fake with viv and america #marvel #marvel comics #mcu #wandavision #america chavez #viv vision #america chavez x viv vision #viv vision x america chavez #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #vision mcu #mcu vision #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #GUESS WHO IS FINALLY IN THIS CHAPTER #GUESS

[aparticularbandit]

Loss of Control; Loss of Self

Summary: Wanda panics over the events early in Civil War, and Steve and Bucky try to help her.

Fic Rating: T.

AO3

She can’t breathe.

It comes on all at once, stifling her, sitting on her chest heavier than her brother pummeling her when they got into arguments so, so long ago.  And of course she would be thinking of him now because he was the best in these moments, and he’s gone, and that’s her fault, too, just like all of this is her fault, so really, she shouldn’t be thinking of him at all.  But she’s gotten so good about avoiding those thoughts in her day-to-day life that they have to break in when she, too, is breaking.

Not.  Not really breaking.  She’ll be fine.  She’ll be fine.  She’ll just push this one down like she’s been pushing them down for the past several days, trying not to think, not to—

See.  Here’s the thing about pushing off a panic attack and not letting your body panic.

It just. gets. worse.

Bigger and bigger with more and more pressure until…until—

She can’t breathe.

~

They notice it in the van after picking her up.

Well.

Steve notices it because Clint is focused on a lot of other things right now, Bucky has never spent time with Wanda to notice it, and Sam….  Sam would notice it if Sam were paying attention, but Sam’s trying to get hold of this contact he has who infiltrated the complex a while back, and so is distracted.  It isn’t that Sam doesn’t pay attention to Wanda – he does – and it isn’t that Clint doesn’t either, but Clint left the Avengers when Wanda joined and so doesn’t know her signs the way he knows Nat’s.

Steve notices because he’s always the one who notices.

(When Vision isn’t there to soothe her before anyone has the chance to notice.  This, however, is wildly unfair.  Vision can notice a person’s heartrate and their change in body temperature.  Even the most focused of them can catch breathing, but not those.  Cheater.)

It is essential to keep Bucky hidden.  They can’t just stop wherever they want, whenever they want.  But Steve sees Wanda in the rearview mirror, the way her shoulders tense, the way her face grows ashen, the way her fingers begin to fidget, and knows that if he doesn’t do something soon, then things will grow much worse.

To talk out loud would be to call attention to it.  That will make it worse.  It isn’t for everyone, but it is for Wanda, who would rather panic in private, away from everyone else.  Steve tries to meet her eyes in the mirror, but her gaze remains focused out the window, flitting with everything passing by.  She swallows.  Hard.  Wets her lips.  Glances back—

There.

Steve meets her eyes, notes the smallest hint of scarlet bubbling within them.  Wanda, he thinks toward her, hoping her mind is open to him, are you okay?

He knows the answer.  He knows the answer.

Wanda gives a subtle shake of her head.

Do we need to stop?

Wanda hesitates.  The scarlet in her eyes pops like a popcorn kernel then shrinks back down again, although not as small as it was before.  That means yes, even if she’s trying to keep that from being necessary.  Better to stop and not risk—

“Boys, we’re going to need to pull over.”  They’re on back roads and alleys already.  It shouldn’t be hard to stop.  Still, before anyone can ask, he says, “Code Sestra.”

Sam knows the code; they built it after the first of Wanda’s sometimes destructive panic attacks just for an occasion such as these.  Clint wasn’t around for the code, but he glances at Wanda and picks up on it easily enough.  Perhaps, once, he’d needed a code for Nat, too, something secret so that they could pull away and she could be grounded.  (Something tells Steve this is unlikely; Nat does not panic during missions – something comes over her that suppresses all of that until afterwards, and even afterwards, most days.  Wanda has tried to learn this.  She has not succeeded.)

Bucky’s head perks up, dark eyes full of something like fear.  “Sestra?” he echoes in a gravely voice.  His gaze follows the tilt of Steve’s head.  “Oh.”

Just that.  A quiet sort of oh.

(Steve remembers when—)

He tears the van off to one side, hides it under a bridge that’s been closed off for what looks like a long time – the barriers are covered in rust – and hopes that will be good enough.  It has to be.

~

Wanda doesn’t always see scarlet when she panics.  In fact, most of the time she doesn’t, and that’s how she knows they’re survivable, how she knows she can push them down until later.  Not that…not that the scarlet haze isn’t survivable, but it’s more…it’s more...it’s….

Scarlet tinges her vision in the van.

(She’s not thinking about him.)

Like looking through tinted glasses, only a deeper and darker red than rose, nearly the color of blood.

(If she’d BEEN there—)

Steve’s voice, calm and assured, breaks through the circling, cycling thoughts easily enough, but Wanda doesn’t cling to him the way she normally clings to—

(She’s NOT thinking about HIM.)

Besides.  Wanda knows how to calm herself.  She doesn’t need the help.  She’ll be fine.  She can make the haze—

The van hits a pothole, and everything, everything, everything turns a bubbling blood red.

Wanda digs her fingers into her upper thigh.  This doesn’t help as much as it once did.  To be honest, she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.  The action is reflexive, a grounding form of pain, and the red fades the slightest bit.  Barely.  Barely.  It’s enough.  It’s not enough.  It has to be enough.

When Steve pulls over, Wanda opens the door before the van even comes to a complete stop.  She shrugs Clint’s hand from her shoulder – it’s cool, it’s calming, it’s restrictive, which makes things worse – and when she steps out of the still moving car, her ankle bends just wrong but heals itself in the same moment.

That’s.  That’s not good.

Well.  Busted broken sprained ankle is also not good, the pain is also not good, none of it is particularly good, but immediate healing, while it should be good, just means that the power within her – she still doesn’t understand it, she still doesn’t know where, exactly, it comes from – that Stone, maybe, that is now perched in—

(She ISN’T thinking about HIM.)

Wanda gets as far as she can from the van, hides against one of the pillars holding the bridge up, the one closest to the river itself, and huddles down, puts her hand over her ears, and stops avoiding it all.

~

“Stay in the van.”

Steve barely looks at everyone else before he jumps out of the driver side.  By the time he’s out, Wanda’s already in hiding – which is better – but a thin fractured globe of her own power spirals around her.  It ruffles through the weeds growing just to one side, and as he walks closer – hands outstretched, as gentle and as nonthreatening as he can muster – it chops through a few of them, adds the blades of grass to the spiral, and throws them out and away.

That’s not so bad, right now.

“Wanda.  Are you going to be okay?”

~

That is a foolish question.

Of course, she’s going to be okay.  Logically, she knows she’s going to be okay.  If she didn’t want to be okay, her power wouldn’t let her not be okay.  She might trust in much of anything these days, but when she’s at her lowest, she trusts in that.

(She trusts in Vision, too, and what did she do to him?)

No.  No, she’s not.  No, she’s not going to be okay.  She’s absolutely not going to be okay.  She ran away, she ran away, and she dragged him into the ground and he is going to hate her—

(She hates herself.)

—and they’re getting a group together for another fight, and he’s going to be there again, and she’s going to have to deal with that, and she’s probably going to have to fight him – actually fight him, not just run away, but actually fight – and she knows she can’t pull her punches because this is her own life that’s on the line, but she can’t just—

(She can, but she doesn’t want that—)

What happens if she can’t control her power?  What happens if she kills—

She won’t kill him she won’t kill anyone they’re not here to kill anyone they’re just here to help Steve and she’s here to—

It is so easy to say she isn’t afraid of herself anymore when she’s just at the complex, cooking, eating, safe and easy.  It’s an entirely different thing out here, when the last time she was on any mission at all she made a bad decision (one bad decision, it only takes one) and blew up—

Wanda covers her head with her hands and hunches over.

(Life is so much easier when it’s two people, alone, in a house, without having to worry about any of this superhero bullshit.  Maybe, someday, she will have that.)

(Of course, she won’t have that.  She is broken.  She will always be broken.  She is a weapon and weapons don’t get happy endings.)

~

The magic throbs like a beacon, but it doesn’t attack or hit anything else.  It doesn’t get larger.  It doesn’t billow or blossom the way it had that first day, when no one had been able to get through, not even Nat, who was Wanda’s friend and confidante long before Vision was, simply because they could communicate in ways about their own experiences that the others, sadly, could not.

Wanda’s English is not bad, but her Sokovian and Russian are far better, which meant Nat could clue into nuances that the others never could.  Not even Vision, who could speak the language, but had none of the personal or cultural experiences to communicate.  He could do all sorts of research, but knowing about something is never – will never – be the same as living through it.

Steve knows about the fifty years he was under the ice.  He’s learned some cultural references and where they come from.  He can’t make those references correctly yet, though he tries, on occasion.  He didn’t live with them.  Didn’t live through them.

(Sometimes it’s better to communicate with someone who has absolutely no cultural touchstones at all.  Then you can mold and shape and learn and introduce and—

That sounds menacing.  It is not meant to be.

Vision simply does not have the cultural biases that everyone else on the team has, for better or for worse.  That makes him gentler than even Steve, with his own history of trauma, can ever be.

It also means that Vision is a blank slate, and slates can be broken.)

“Wanda, I’m coming through.  It’ll be fine.”  Steve steps closer to the spiral of her magic like a bomb, and it pushes him back just the same, forcing him out and away.  He holds his hand up and starts forward again.  “Wanda—”

“You are so bad at this.”

The voice comes from behind him, and Steve knows better than to look away from Wanda right now, but he turns, and he looks, and Bucky – baseball cap and hair pulled back into a ponytail and all – runs past him into the spiral, his metal arm set as a shield between him and Wanda as he steadily pushes forward.

Steve tries to follow.  The chaos does not let him in the way it does Bucky.  He can’t imagine why.

~

The worst – the absolute worst – thing about losing control and panicking like this is that Wanda subconsciously reaches out and anchors herself in the minds of everyone closest to her.  This is both a wonderful and a horrible thing – wonderful because in some cases she finds the reassurance she seeks but horrible because in some cases their fear of her just doubles, triples her fear of herself.

Steve isn’t really afraid of her, except that he is.  He’s concerned about how much she might be hurting herself, concerned that she might get worse, concerned that he can’t help her, and while all of these concerns are good and right and true, they just increase Wanda’s own anxiety.  She can’t make it so that he can help her, she can’t promise him that she won’t get worse, and she certainly can’t say she isn’t hurting herself when that’s all these attacks ever do – hurt her.  His worry that she might hurt anyone else is the worst thing of all, because she’s already worried about that, worried about who she’s already hurt, panicking over who she might hurt in the future – not just individuals, like her brother, but supers meant to help people, like Vision, but entire swaths of people because she can’t control her powers enough to get the bomb away.

Sure, Steve cares for her – about her – and that is reassuring, but his concern destroys all of the assurance that can give.  Steve is so good, and Wanda is so not, and his goodness hurts her.

Wanda doesn’t know anything about Bucky, but she senses in the moment that he breaks her circle that he is just as broken as she is.

It isn’t a conscious decision to let him in.

But she does.

~

Bucky doesn’t look back.

That’s the real truth of the thing, isn’t it?

Bucky doesn’t look back.

Because the moment he starts to look back, he will have to think about everything he did and everything he’s done and everything that’s being done for him, even though he didn’t ask for any of it.  He’ll think about all of the pain that he is at the very root of causing, whether he wants that or not.

Bucky doesn’t look back.

But he steps into the spiral of chaos that he has never seen before with his arm up as a shield and forces himself forward because he knows what pain looks like, even if it isn’t etched onto his own face.  And when he gets to the center, he does what should have been done to him but what no one – not even Steve – is willing to do with him, which is that he wraps the panicking, terrified girl into his arms and holds her.

That’s all.

Just holds her.

Holds her and mutters in a broken Sokovian, “I’m here.  You are safe.”

It’s a language he shouldn’t know, but he does, hidden in a broken mind that he shouldn’t have, but he does.

She doesn’t have to speak in words because he doesn’t need words to understand that she’s in the same place he is.

So he sits with her and says nothing and stays there until she calms.

~

(Wanda takes deep breaths in.

She curls up against the chest of the man who is holding her.

She does not know him.

It means nothing.

It means everything.)

~

Steve runs in as Wanda’s power fades, as soon as it’s safe for him to do so, and finds Bucky gently rocking Wanda, humming a song he does not know.  He crouches down next to them, notes the cut on Bucky’s face that wasn’t there before, and then places a hand on Wanda’s shoulder.  “If you need to stay—”

“No.”  Her accent is so thick.  She wears it like armor.  “I’m with you.”  Her fingers flex as she stands.  “I’m fine.”

~

(Wanda can’t admit that she isn’t fine.  It’s blatant that she isn’t.  But there’s nowhere else to go.  Both of her homes are destroyed.  It's time to build a new one.)

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #steve rogers #captain america #bucky barnes #winter soldier #ca:cw #sam wilson #clint barton #i could actually use this as a setting up point for other stuff #or follow ups or something like that #but i don't think i will necessarily #idk

[aparticularbandit]

Kiss in the Rain

Summary: Ash may have asked Agnes to cross the multiverse with her, but Agnes refuses to believe there's anything romantic in that question. No one really wants her, after all.

Part of The Finding Family Omnibus.

Agnes Bohner/Wanda Maximoff (Earth-838)

Rating: T.

AO3

She was never meant to stay here forever.

Agnes remembers the first time Ash asked in that early morning quiet reserved just for the two of them, remembers the sharp scent of ginger in her tea, the equally sharp tang of it on her tongue, remembers Ash stirring her tea with a silver spoon and saying, “I think I might leave soon,” before glancing up briefly through her lashes and asking, “Would you like to join me?”

It’s not a request to run away with her by any means, but Agnes grew up on romance stories and soap operas.  She can read between the lines.  (She tells herself not to because that’s what screwed her over with Wanda – with Scarlet – but she can’t help it.  For all that her life might look like nothing but one trouble after another to an outsider, Agnes’s best quality is positivity.  Her worst is mistaken hope.)

“Where would we go?” Agnes asks while her heart warms and constricts.  “Not that…not that I mind, of course, dear.”  Her gaze drops to her tea, focuses on the warm amber color within, the way it ripples as her hands so slightly shake.

Ash takes a sip of her tea.  “I haven’t decided yet.”  She pauses.  “Somewhere far away.”

When her words trail away, Agnes sneaks a glance of her.  Ash’s gaze has moved away from her, out the nearest window, full of longing.  The thick scar across her forehead gleams white in the morning sunlight.  It’s alluring.  “What about Scarlet?” she asks, trying to keep her voice from trembling.  “What about Agatha?”

What about our family? is what she should be asking, but…but….

Ash snorts and turns back to Agnes, resting her head in her free hand.  “I think they’re quite full of themselves, don’t you?”

~

Of course, when Ash brought up traveling to another universe, Agnes had her doubts.

“What if we want to come back?” she’d asked.  “What if we want to visit all of the lovelies still here?”

Ash just tilted her head to one side and looked at Agnes with deep green eyes that might as well have been peering into her soul.  “Do you think you’ll want to come back, Agnes?”

Even now, Agnes hasn’t told Ash everything that happened with Agatha and Scarlet, but sometimes…sometimes it feels like she still knows, somehow.  It felt like it then, too; she remembers wondering if the others told her.  It soured her against them even more; that sort of thing should stay between them.  It shouldn’t—

“No,” Agnes found herself saying, the softest sort of admission she’s ever made before, one that she wouldn’t be making at all, even to herself, if she didn’t have to consider the possibility.  “I don’t think I will.”

~

Over another cup of tea while everyone slept, Ash convinced her to live together in the new universe.  “At least at first,” she said with that disarming gentle lift of one corner of her lips.  “I think it will help the boys have some sense of normalcy.”

“Of course, dear.”  Agnes nodded, thinking nothing of it.  “We need to consider the boys.  I’ll stay as long as you like.”

Ash lifted her cup of tea between both hands and blew gently across its top.  “Us, too,” she murmured as the cup warmed her hands.  “I think it will be nice for us, too.”

She didn’t intend to do so, but Agnes startled regardless.  When she looked up, she found that Ash was simply taking another sip of her tea, as though what she’d said didn’t mean much of anything at all.  So Agnes stilled her rapidly beating heart with a calming breath in – the scent of orange from her tea stirring in the air – and said, “Yes.”  She swallowed and nodded once. “It…it would be nice to…to not have to start over all on our own, wouldn’t it, dear?”  A nervous chuckle escaped her.  “Of…of course, you would never be on your own, since you have your boys, but….”

“Mmhm.”

When Ash smiled around the lip of her teacup, Agnes didn’t catch it.  Perhaps it’s better that she didn’t.

~

The only problem with this new universe – and Agnes didn’t even consider it a problem, she still doesn’t – was how many people looked at her sometimes as though they know her, as though she did something horrible to them.  It happened so often in those first few days that the boys picked up on it.  Even Tommy started giving her a look of disgust.

Ash just took her hand, gave it a gentle squeeze, and said, “Maybe it’s time that we give somewhere else a try.”

After the third new city in a month, Agnes suggested, gently, that maybe, maybe it would be better for the boys if they went their separate ways.  “I can take care of myself, hon,” she’d said over their morning cup of tea.  “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“But who will I drink tea with?” Ash asked, her deep green eyes wide with shock.  Before Agnes could suggest that she might find someone new to drink tea with (or that, perhaps, Agnes didn’t need to live with her to drink tea with her), she continued, “Who would I start my days with?”

Agnes’s cheeks flushed bright, and she dropped her gaze.  “It was only for a little while,” she murmured, staring at her hands and clasping them together to give her some sort of stillness.  “It was only until we got used to this new world, wasn’t it, hon?  I was never meant to stay here.”

With you.

“I’m not kicking you to the curb, Agnes.”

And that was that.

Agnes has never been very good at conflict, and she’s even less good at it when the conflict is just as much within herself.  She wanted to stay with Ash – she still does – and at least then, Ash gave her a good reason to stay.  Why would she ever fight against that?  She wouldn’t.  She didn’t.

But….

~

It was another few months before they found somewhere the people didn’t seem to know Agnes, and it was another few months beyond that where they settled in and became normal parts of the town, and it was another few months beyond that before Tommy looked at Agnes, gave her that same disgusted look he’d learned from the people who acted like they knew her, and said where his mother could not hear him, “When are you gonna leave?”

“I…I…um….”

“Mom doesn’t even like you, you know.”  Tommy looked over Agnes in a way that reminded her of the way Ralph used to look at her, and any of her objections disappeared in a moment.  “She just lets you stay here because you’re so pathetic.”  He glared at her.  “Why don’t you go live your own life, huh?”

Agnes just stood there while Tommy walked off, breathing heavy.  Over the next several days, she thought of Ralph, who often spat words at her in just the same blunt, certain tone, and of Agatha, who’d hugged her and kissed her when they first truly met (other than the break-in, which Agnes tends to not think about), but who’d left her alone when she’d most needed someone, and even more importantly of Scarlet – of Wanda – who was the last person who brought her from her normal life all the way out into the middle of nowhere, who’d seemed like she’d wanted her there, who’d encouraged her affections, and who’d, in the end, only wanted her because—

Maybe, for once, she should listen to the people who are telling her the truth.

Maybe she should leave.

~

She was never meant to stay here forever.

Agnes knows that.

But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier when she finally starts to pack up her bags, pack up the life she’d built here in this little house with Ash, and pack up the self she’d slowly been starting to become.

Ash pretends that she doesn’t understand.  She pretends that she wants Agnes to stay, but Agnes knows the truth.  Ash is just being nice.  She’s just putting up with Agnes because she’d dragged her into this new universe with her and it’s taking longer to feel good here.  She feels responsible, but she didn’t ever mean for Agnes to stay this long.

For once, finally, Agnes understands that.  There’s a lot of things people don’t know how to say, especially if they’re uncomfortable.  She does that all the time!  So the kindest, nicest thing she can do for Ash is to leave and not make her have to say anything at all.  So she gives Ash a smile and forces herself not to cry and says, “I just thought it was time I got out of your hair, dear.  That’s all.”

“Agnes—”

“The boys are settled, dear.”  Agnes fiddles with the new luggage set she just bought.  It’s shiny and bright and the softest shades of rose and lavender she’s ever seen on anything.  It’s perfect.  It’s beautiful.  She just regrets that she doesn’t have another reason to use it.  “We’re settled.  We know people, and you know people, and you don’t need to put up with dear old Agnes for another moment.”

“I never thought I was putting up with—”

Agnes doesn’t look up.  That makes it easier.  “You’ll find someone else for tea, dear.  Someone better to spend your mornings with.”  She smiles, thinking of the kindness she is giving by not taking up anymore of Ash’s time.  “You don’t need to worry about me anymore,” she says, turning just enough to place a hand on Ash’s shoulder.  “You’ll be fine, hon.  I’ll be fine.”

You’ll be happier without me.

“Is that really what you want, Nessie?”  Ash looks up then, eyes of steel meeting Agnes’s much softer gaze.  “You really want to leave?”

No.  No, she doesn’t want to leave.  No, she wants to stay here forever and start her mornings with Ash and drink tea with her for always.  But that’s…that’s selfish, to want those things, if it means that Ash is unhappy, to force her wants to overpower Ash’s needs just because Ash, like her, doesn’t know how to tell her to do otherwise.  She won’t do to Ash what so many other people have done to her.  She won’t.

So she lies.

Or…she tries to lie, but she can’t get the words to come out.

Instead, she says, “We’ll talk tomorrow, hon, if you…if you want,” and forces herself to leave.

~

~

The rain drenches her hair.  Flattens it.

Her luggage gets caught in the mud.

She can’t tell if it’s the rain or her own tears that are ruining her make-up.  (Honestly, sometimes she thinks she should stop wearing it at all, given how often she cries.  But she was going to be good today.  The rain just…just screwed everything up.)

Agnes tugs on her luggage a little harder.  “C’mon, hon.”  She turns, grabs the handle with both hands, and gives it a rough tug.  “We’ve got to go—”

The luggage jolts out of the mud.  Agnes loses her grip, stumbles backward, and falls into the mud.  She forces herself to stand, rubs her eyes with the back of one hand, grabs the handle again, and starts away.

It doesn’t matter that she’s already crying.  It doesn’t matter that she’s covered in mud.  She’s going—

“Nessie.”

No.  Agnes refuses to listen.  This isn’t like the romance movies or the books or the soap operas.  It’s nothing like that.  She’s not going to make Ash put up with her anymore.  She’s not going to make anyone put up with her anymore.  She’s going to leave before—

Ash grabs her shoulder a little too hard and turns her to face her, those eyes like steel staring down at her.

For a moment, all Agnes can see is Ralph, who often grabbed her the same way, and she flinches, winces, and tears herself out of Ash’s grip.  “Don’t,” she whines, throat tight, even though there’s something comforting in the gesture, something familiar, and something in her longs for the rough touch as a result, leans toward it.

But Ash’s face falls.  “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to—”  She takes a deep breath, the water soaking her, now, too, and she tries to push her hair back but it falls just as flat as Agnes’s has.  “You didn’t say yes,” she says, near breathless, and meets Agnes’s eyes again, searching them.  “If you don’t want to go, then don’t.”

Agnes shakes her head.  “Please don’t make me stay when you don’t want me,” she says, finally, her voice soft, quiet.  “I can’t…I can’t live through that again, Ash.  Even if…even if you’re trying to be nice, please don’t…don’t.”  She presses her lips together, shakes her head again.  “I can’t.  I can’t live through that again, and—”

Ash kisses her.

It’s a rough sort of thing, mismatched, their teeth knocking together, not quite fitting, but not quite uncomfortable either.  It’s not the way kissing in the rain is supposed to be, if the movies and books and things told Agnes anything, but maybe she should quit expecting life to line up with television shows because she’s not in one.

(Not anymore.)

Also, in television shows, Agnes would be a lot less confused.  “What are….”  She wipes her lips with the back of her hand.  “What are you doing, hon?  You don’t have to—”

“Nessie, you think I’d kiss you just because I had some misguided sense of duty to you?”  Ash searches her eyes.  “Is that easier to believe than that I actually want you here?”

Agnes grapples with that for a moment before saying, “Yes.”  She tries not to think it, tries not to say it, but she does anyway.  “No one ever wants me, hon.  Not really.  They just pretend.”  She chuckles, then, and thinks of Ralph.  “Some of them don’t even pretend very well.”

“Well, I’m not pretending.”  Ash sighs and looks back to the house.  “Now come back inside.  It’s cold out here, and you’re being ridiculous.”  She shivers as though to prove her point.

Right now, Agnes just stares at Ash in disbelief, still grappling with everything, still unsure.  “Wait,” she says, hesitantly.

Ash turns to her with one brow raised.  “For what?”

“Can we…can we try that again, hon?” Agnes asks, unable to meet Ash’s eyes.  “The…the kiss, I mean.  Now that we’re both…now that we know what we’re both doing.”  She runs her hand through her hair and then looks up, hopeful.  When she sees Ash’s smile, she takes that as a quiet permission and kisses her.

It’s better this time, the kiss.  It feels good.  Right.  And the slightest hum of approval when she tugs Ash’s bottom lip with her teeth sends a warm shiver down her spine.  “I…I suppose you do want me, then, don’t you, dear?” Agnes purrs in a way that she hasn’t in over a year, even as she questions, as she feels unsure.

“Imagine,” Ash murmurs, staring at Agnes’s lips, “we could have been doing this for the past seven months instead of just drinking tea.”

Agnes’s eyes widen.  “I like tea.  You don’t want—”

Ash hushes her with another kiss.

~

(They wake up the next morning shaking, feverish, and more than a little snot-nosed.

“Next time,” Ash moans, “we don’t kiss in the rain and somebody will listen when I say we should go inside.” Agnes just rolls over and hides her head in her pillow.)

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #kiss in the rain #finding family with wanda and america #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #wanda maximoff 838 #838!wanda maximoff #agnes bohner #tommy shepherd #wandavision #agnes bohner x wanda maximoff #agnes bohner x 838!wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agnes bohner #838!wanda maximoff x agnes bohner #AGNES IS HER OWN CHARACTER HERE SHE IS NOT AGATHA! #because poor baby also should have good things and happiness!!

[aparticularbandit]

For Fake: Chapter Three

Summary: America lied about having a girlfriend to get her moms off her back, but when they want to meet said girlfriend, she asks her good friend Viv to step in and help.

VIv Vision/America Chavez

Chapter Rating: G. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter / next chapter

The diner fills as they grow closer to suppertime, but Viv doesn’t notice.  Well.  She tries not to notice, just like she tries not to search for information on everyone who comes in, every time the little bell above the door tingles.  But she can’t stop herself.  It’s an impulse, knowing what she does, even if America says they’re safe, even if America has been here long enough to be a regular – to have a usual order.

The worst happens when America waves to a boy about their age with oily, unkempt black hair and a golden horned crown that he removes and sets on the bar once he sits down.  Instead of waving back, the boy gives her a flirtatious wink.  (That’s really what does it, more than anything else.)

“That’s Loki,” Viv leans forward and hisses out. “How are you friendly with Loki?  He tried to take over the whole world—”

“Yeah, well, he’s a really cool guy when you get to know him.”  America lounges back against her seat, one arm spread across the back of the booth, and gives Viv a look.  “And how would you know?  You’ve never met him.”

Viv comes up with a lie quick, one that would be easily believable.  “No one else wears horns like Loki’s,” she says, although she’s hesitant in tone.  She nods to the crown set on the bar next to him.  “Those make him obvious.  Blatantly so.”

America nods.  “Mmhm.”  She drums her fingers on the back of the booth.  “You’re still doing that Wikipedia stuff, aren’t you?”

“I do so much more than Wikipedia, America.”  Viv huffs with disgust, crosses her arms, and leans back against the booth.

“Yeah, but you’re still doing it.”  America clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth.  Then she leans forward and taps the table with her pointer finger twice.  “The first thing you do in a new universe is learn who you can trust—”

“I believe you told me the first thing you do is find food.”

America rolls her eyes.  “That, too.  For sure.  But you learn who you can trust, and you can trust people here!”  She taps the table again.  “Also there’s great food, so.  Best of both worlds, you know?”  She flashes Viv a grin, one that Viv doesn’t return.  Eventually, her grin fades, and her voice softens.  “Look, you trust me, right?”

Viv nods silently.

“So don’t worry about it!  Not like anybody recognizes you anyway.”  America’s gaze shifts, first down and then back up, as though gauging Viv’s appearance again.  Then she smirks.

Viv can’t counter that.  She tugs her lip between her teeth and glances down at her own dark hands, at her pink and green painted fingernails, at her normal clothes without any indicator of the family to whom she belongs.  Without a second thought, she reaches up and pulls her mom’s necklace out from under her shirt, fiddling with its charm.  “Wanda will.”

America blinks.  “What?”

“Wanda will,” Viv repeats, unable to meet America’s eyes but also unable to miss the way America’s brows raise sharply.  “I met her once.  She and Agatha…they helped my father and me when….”  Her voice trails off, and she gives a shake of her head.  “I never met Agatha, but Wanda…Wanda said she needed to talk with me.  So I listened.”  One corner of her lips curves upward in a fond near smile.  “She saved my dog.”

“Sparky?”

Viv nods.  She doesn’t say it – doesn’t really want to get into the specifics of everything that happened.  It’s impossible to talk about how her mom killed her dog while they were supposed to be under some form of house arrest, how Viv had gone downstairs to find both of her parents gone – her father to confront her brother’s murderer, her mother to confront her father – and found Sparky’s body crushed and broken on the floor, twitching from electric synapses that hadn’t been able to stop, synapses that prickled against her vibranium skin when she’d picked him up and carried him to her room.  She’d hated her mother then.

Sometimes, a part of her still does.

“What happened to Sparky?”

“I would rather not say.”

“And to you and your dad?”

Viv averts her gaze, refusing to meet America’s eyes.  She rubs her arm in a self-soothing gesture but doesn’t say anything more.

Out of the corner of her eye, America shifts.  “Does this have to do with your mom?  And….”  She doesn’t say his name.  Probably because she can’t remember it, if she was ever told in the first place.

For all that Viv doesn’t like to speak of her mother, she likes to speak of Vin even less.  She doubts that she has ever mentioned him by name.  “I do not want to talk about it,” she says, finally, “but I thought you should know, in case that throws a kink in your plans.”

America presses her lips together.  She thinks about it a long time, an action that grows more and more uncharacteristic of her the longer it takes.  That alone sits uneasy in the pit of Viv’s stomach, and she fights the urge to say America should have chosen someone else – even Kamala – if that would be easier for her.  But just as Viv decides to speak, America opens her mouth.  “I’ll—”

“Here ya go.”  Dottie appears as though out of nowhere, and America shuts her mouth so quickly that she must have bitten her tongue – she certainly winces as though she has.  The waitress sets a platter covered with—

Viv’s eyes widen.  “Oh, for the love of—”

“Chocolate covered potato pancakes, drizzled with hot sauce, and with a dollop of mashed pears on the side.”  Dottie sets a second platter in front of Viv.  Then she takes a woven bread basket from atop her serving platter and sets it between them.  “And a servin’ of ‘Merica verified pizza balls.  To share.”

“Pizza balls?”  Any thought of what America might have been trying to say before is now gone, as is any thought that they would return to that conversation before eating anything at all.  She snatches a cheese and pepperoni encrusted ball from the basket as Dottie walks away.  But before she pops it into her mouth, she nods to the plate in front of Viv.  “Joey figured it out!”  She leans forward conspiratorially.  “Sweet potatoes.  Not normal potatoes.”

Viv blinks twice.  “Did he try this with ‘normal’ potatoes first?”

America scrunches her face up and makes a tongue out expression of such disgust that Viv doesn’t press further.

~

When America was thirteen years old, she became afraid.

It wasn’t any particularly world – or multiverse – shattering fear.  Her eyes didn’t suddenly glow with life-preserving panic, and she didn’t get sucked into yet another universe where she would have to learn a lot of new rules and find a lot – or even just a handful – of new people to trust with herself.  She just…became afraid.

All of those universes, all of the experiences she’d had, all of the things she’d learned and internalized, all of the smaller things that she’d found and loved – America realized she was already forgetting some of them.  Forgetting friends that she would likely never see again.  Forgetting how some universes differed from each other because the memories just blended together sometimes.  Forgetting the different, unique foods she’d had.

The foods aren’t really the important thing.  They never have been.  But being able to recreate them is a little bit like recapturing her past and bring elements of it to her future.

She just doesn’t know how to cook.

But there’s something beautifully intimate in the diner – in the way Dottie listens to her stories, the way Joey listens to her descriptions of foods she’s had and tries to recreate them, even the way Viv trusts them enough to eat something based on America’s memories.

America tries not to stare too hard, and it’s easy to keep herself distracted with the pizza balls, which taste not exactly the way she remembers them, but close enough to it that they’re passable (and they’re still pizza balls, so they’re still far superior to most other foods).  But every now and again, she looks up, sees Viv enjoying the sweet potato pancakes drenched in chocolate and hot sauce, and her heart warms.  Then Viv catches her looking, and she stops checking.  That’s super awkward, after all.

Still, America can’t help herself from asking, when Viv is done, “What did you think?  Did you like it?”  She shoves the mostly empty basket of pizza balls over to Viv.  “You had one of these, right?  Aren’t they the best?”

“They are more than adequate.”  Viv stabs another pizza ball with her fork and takes a bite out of it.  “Certainly far superior to Hot Pockets.”

America groans.  “Hot Pockets are such trash.  They’re just, like, pizza Poptarts.  And Poptarts suck.”

“Poptarts suck,” Viv echoes with a confused look.

“Yeah!  They suck!”  America may not be a foodie – what even does that word mean, anyway? – but she definitely has strong opinions on food.  She’s pretty sure that’s okay; she knows more about multiversal cuisine than anyone else, so she knows food better than everyone else.  What it tastes like, what works together and what doesn’t.  It’s just remembering all of it that’s hard.  Which is why she’s so insistent when she says, “You’re eating them wrong!  You have to pop it into your mouth!  Like this!”  And she takes a pizza ball and pops it into Viv’s mouth.

Well.  She throws it at her with the understanding that Viv will catch it in her mouth, which is basically the same thing.

Because Viv does catch it in her mouth, despite America’s absolutely horrible throw, which is great because that means she doesn’t want to waste food.  Her cheeks swell out as she chews, or she’s coughing but trying not to spatter chunks out all over everything, and when she’s finished the full ball, she chugs on her root beer, breathing hard.  Then she shoots a look at America.  “Do not ever do that again.”

“What, you mean this?”  America takes another pizza ball and throws it at her, but instead of catching it in her mouth, Viv catches it with her left hand.  Her eyes gleam a matrix green before she throws the ball back at America, who tries to do the really cool thing and catch it in her mouth like Viv does, but misses.  The pizza ball splatters against the booth.

Dottie shoots them a look that makes America flush.  She places a hand on her customer – an older guy with a crooked nose that America’s never met who sits across from a woman with a lightning-shaped scar large through a fake eye – and then leans forward to mutter something in the ear of the woman before making her way over to America and Viv.  Probably something like, “Excuse me, I need to take care of something,” only in Dottie’s voice and not nearly as formal as Viv likes to talk.

“Shit,” America says under her breath.  “Shit shit shit shit shit shit.”

“Alright,” Dottie starts before she even makes it completely to them, “you two lovebirds gotta stop that flirtin’—”

“We’re not lovebirds—”

Dottie ignores that remark.  “Started a food fight, gotta get out of the diner.  Them’s the rules.”

“Aw, c’mon—”

“Now, don’t you aw, c’mon me, little Ms. America.”  Dottie doesn’t glare at America but doesn’t look at Viv, either.  “You know how messy it’d get in here if there was a real fight?  Bar would break.  All the glasses and plates.  Everythin’ would get knocked over.  People’d start usin’ their powers and—”

America grins.  “That actually sounds like a lot of fun.”

“Fun for you, but a lot of shit for me and Joey and the other girls.”  Dottie knocks her knuckles on the table twice.  “Now, I’ll get ya some to-go boxes if ya need ‘em, but ya gotta pay up and get out.”  She places a hand on America’s shoulder and leans down to speak in a much softer voice.  “Just for now.  Feel free to come back tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”  America stands, pulls an even wad of cash – ones and fives, mostly, so it’s not like a real wad of cash; she just doesn’t fold them into any sort of coherent anything – out of her jean jacket pocket, and sets it on the table.  “C’mon, Viv.  Let’s go.”

Viv glances down at the wad of cash and without even picking it up says, “That’s more than enough to—”

“Yeah, well, Dottie’ll put it on my tab, right, Dottie?”  America doesn’t even look up, just shoves her hands into her jean pockets.  She knows that’s not necessarily true – Dottie’ll take some of it for a tip, maybe a good chunk of whatever’s left, since she’ll have to clean up the booth and that’s really not fair to her – but every so often, on a really bad day, Dottie says that what she’s got’s for free.  And she never says it’s on the house, which sounds like pity, but always says America already paid for it with all that extra money she leaves lying around.  She likes that better.  It’s nice.

As America makes her way to the door, she hears Viv behind her, apologizing to Dottie for their foolishness.  She scowls.  Some first date, she thinks, before immediately correcting herself.  Not a date.

~

Viv pops another pizza ball into her mouth.  She’s not sure they actually taste better this way.  It’s just an overwhelming explosion of flavor, which admittedly might be better if she wasn’t interested in tasting the finer notes or flavor combinations inherent in the—

Okay, sure, no one in their right mind is trying to do that with a pizza ball, but that doesn’t mean this is the best way to eat them.

Outside, it’s grown dark. Viv doesn’t feel the cold, but she can see the small puffs of cloud her warm breath leaves in the air as she walks, the slightly bigger ones that America’s breath also leaves.  She notices America shiver and regrets that she doesn’t have a jacket or something like that to drape about her shoulders, even if another jacket on top of America’s standard denim jacket would look odd at best, obnoxious at worst.  “Would you like one?” she asks, holding out the basket full of additional pizza balls.

(She does not tell America, who’d stood outside a little while waiting on her, that she’d gotten an additional order to go.  No one would benefit from that information.  Least of all America herself.)

“Nah.  I’m good.”

America stops only a little way further down the sidewalk, lets out a huge puff of air, and looks up at the stars.  “You know, sometimes I think I did better out there.  In the multiverse.  Just jumping around, you know?”  She holds a bare hand up and looks through her fingers at the expanding galaxy.  “It was fun.”

Her tone suggests it absolutely was not fun, but Viv will not call her out for that.

“With your moms,” Viv says, not so subtly changing the subject back to what it should have been the entire time, “have you told them anything specific about your girlfriend?  Do I need to look like anything, act like anything?”

“No.”  America shakes her head, lets out another sigh, and shoves her hands back into her pockets.  “Probably could’ve told them we broke up, but, like, it’s the holidays?  What asshole breaks up with their girlfriend right before the holidays?”  She fakes a grin, one that doesn’t reach her eyes.  “At least wait until you get the presents.  Then peace out, you know?”

Viv offers half of a shrug.  “Letting them get upset over a fictional jerk of a girlfriend seems like a much easier situation than the one you are currently in.”

“I guess, but I didn’t….”  America’s voice trails off, and she mimics Viv’s shrug before she starts walking again, boots kicking up drifts of snow.  “Agatha’s not great when she’s pissed, and I didn’t want to piss her off.  She’s always weird around the holidays anyway.  She won’t tell me why, though.”

There’s no way for Viv to know anything that a woman she has never met has gone through, but she knows exactly what it is to be weird around the holidays and have no way to explain it, no way to let that weirdness go away.  She doesn’t mess with the charm about her neck, but she thinks about her mom, and she shivers.

America, of course, notices the shiver immediately.  “You cold?”

Viv shakes her head.  “No.  Just thinking.”  She picks one of the pizza balls up, squeezes it just enough for some of the sauce to break through the thick layer of cheese, and then sets it back in the to-go box, closing it.  “I’ll be human for them,” she says, finally, “so Wanda doesn’t—”

“Nah, don’t do that.”  America turns just enough to nearly meet Viv’s eyes.  “It’ll be fine.”

Viv’s heart aches.  “That will be very bad when we break up.”  She tilts her head and meets America’s eyes.  “Unless you are planning to continue this fake dating thing for a much longer time.”

“I’ll tell them we broke up whenever you want,” America answers.  “Except right now, because that’d totally put a crimp in the plan.”  She grins again, and again, there’s no mirth in it.  “Got a day that works best for you?”

Viv shakes her head.  “No.  I will only need to tell Father enough ahead that he won’t plan some sort of holiday activity for us.  He sometimes springs ideas.”  He didn’t do that before, but she doesn’t say that.  Doesn’t want to say that.  Her lips press together into a thin little line.

America nods, accepting all of this.  “I’ll text you, then.  The date.  Need to talk with my moms and set something up.”  She rolls her eyes.  “And anything else.”

That little note of frustration sinks a little too hard.  It shouldn’t.  She doesn’t like America like that.  But for someone who is trying to help out a friend, America is making aspects of this frustratingly hard.

So Viv punches her arm and offers her a bright smile – one that she knows looks weird on her, but she tries anyway.  “It was a good first date,” she says as soon as America looks up, “for not a date.”

America’s brows shoot up.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

In a movie or a story or something, Viv might take this moment to lean up and kiss America’s cheek.  But this isn’t either of those things, and she feels uncomfortable with the very idea.  So she holds her to-go box of pizza balls to her chest and flies off.  Still, when she shares them with her father later, she smiles at the way he pops one full on into his mouth, laughs at his disgusted look when sauce splatters out all over him when he picks one up a little too hard.

It’s nothing, but it’s something.

That’s enough, really.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #for fake with viv and america #marvel #marvel comics #mcu #wandavision #america chavez #viv vision #america chavez x viv vision #viv vision x america chavez #wanda maxmoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #vision mcu #mcu vision #dottie underwood #joseph magneto #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #again they aren't in this chapter #but they are discussed #and they are canonically together in this fic

[aparticularbandit]

Matching Marks

Summary: When Jessica decides not to go to a Toon party, Roger comes up with another idea.

Rating: T. Although the fic content itself is definitely G, it refers to stuff in Jessica's past that is definitely M, but it doesn't talk about them explicitly, just references them, so it lands in T range.

AO3

There’s a difference between celebrating a holiday and being forced to celebrate it, between giving presents and joy and being given as a present and joy.  At one point in her life, Jessica Rabbit might have considered herself worthy of celebrating, of giving presents, of joy, but that moment was ripped away from her by copyright owners who had designed her with a darker intent.  Joy is a far scream from happiness, and she’s had so little of the latter that it’s impossible to speak of any experience she’s had with the former – especially any that hasn’t been tainted in one form or another.  If it is hard for her to conceive of future happiness, then how could she possibly think of future joy?

In the past nearly half year, however, Jessica’s world has been upended.  A new copyright owner, Eleanor Weiss, purchased her from the pair who previously owned her, when she’d thought she would literally die before ever being sold.  This, of course, nearly happened, given that her previous owners also would much rather have preferred her dead than sold, as long as they could still gain the money from her sale.  It was only prevented by people who found out, who came to save her, to….

It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter.

After her near death at the hands of her previous owners, and after the resketching, reinking, and repainting needed due to the Dip destruction of parts of her form, Eleanor did something previously unimaginable: she gave Jessica a choice on her next job.  This on top of not forcing her to return to her previous type of jobs, on top of allowing her a normal existence like….

Well, not like any other Toon.  There are still hundreds of Toons just like her doing jobs just like she had been owned by owners just as greedy as her own had been (perhaps not that greedy, given that hers allowed the Dipping of their Toons for others’ enjoyment, which only led to the destruction of their merchandise and a slow, slow bankruptcy as their Toons died).  Perhaps even some of them are allowed to enjoy their job, to enjoy what they were created to do, but given the legal situation surrounding all of that, it is less likely.  As much as they might enjoy it, there will always be trauma associated with it.  That is the law; that is the requirement.

Eleanor, perhaps, would allow Jessica to return to her former manner of life, if that was what Jessica wanted.

(She hadn’t.)

So for the past several months, Jessica has been among other Toons, trying to relearn better habits, to learn new ones to override old ones, trying to fit in when she isn’t terrified of the people around her.  (It is a healthy terror built on a lack of trust.  A very healthy lack of trust given her previous job and everything that has happened to her.)  Sometimes, she does well.  Sometimes, she makes her way back to her new apartment in a slightly better part of town – not ToonTown, not yet, because she is so used to needing to be accessible by humans and because, in all honesty, so much of her life has changed over the past several months that something staying the same is…comforting.

Even if it is a new apartment.

But she is trying.  She is putting in the effort, what little she can.  And sometimes – sometimes – that plays out in her favor.

But not always.

~

“Jessy!  Jessy!” Roger runs up to Jessica with a crinkled up piece of paper in his hands.  The closer he gets, the more obvious it is that the paper is torn.  Dirty.  Nearly destroyed.  His blue denim overalls, already covered in so many patches they might as well be a quilt, contain numerous new holes – mostly small ones, although one has been torn through the patch that covers his knee – and a few singes here and there.  A couple of his whiskers are still smoking.

That should be laughable.  It isn’t as though a Toon can be seriously harmed by fire, not in the same way that they can by Dip, except that they can, except that if the fire gets deep enough under their skin, it can cause serious harm to the living Cel at their heart.  But no one ever thinks about that.  Most humans just consider Toons to be indestructible.  To be fair, so do most Toons.

Roger skids to a halt, arms wheeling in midair, and nearly runs directly into Jessica.  But he careens to a halt just short of her, his head nearly—

It wouldn’t be funny for Roger to run into Jessica.  It would be funny, perhaps, if there were viewers paying attention to everything, but there aren’t, and Jessica doesn’t particularly like being run into.  She likes it even less when it means that his eyes would land directly in her breasts.  Or perhaps he likes it less; Roger is always so careful and conscientious of her potential boundaries, even though Jessica was raised not to have them.

As it is, Roger stops just in time.  He lets out a soft chuckle, rubs his neck with one gloved hand, and looks up with huge blue eyes.  There’s an awkwardness to him.  A vulnerability.

It’s cute.

Jessica’s brows raise.  “Is something wrong?”  She crosses her arms, rubbing her fingers along the scars her previous job left behind.

“No!” Roger responds immediately, and the answer seems to shock him out of whatever he was feeling before.  He grins up at her, one ear hanging lopsidedly to the side.  “Betty’s throwing a party!  See!”  He holds the paper up as high as he can, waving it in front of her face.

Jessica reads a few of the lines here and there as the paper shakes in front of her.  Bits and pieces.  A date.  A time.  Something about gifts.  “I’m not sure Betty would like someone she didn’t give an invitation to—”

“I can bring someone with me!” Roger interrupts.  “And she told me to give you this!”  He offers a look of chagrin, furry white cheeks turning a bright red with embarrassment.  “I ran through some sets.  Wait.”  He whirls around, ears flopping as he does.  “Where’d the ribbon go?”

“Don’t worry about it.”  Jessica kneels down until she’s on eye level with Roger.  “Will you tell her I’m not going?”

Roger’s head whirls back around, and his already wide eyes have grown wider, like plates.  No, exactly like plates; if Jessica pays close enough attention, she can see the intricate white designs in floral along the rims of his irises.  “Not going!” he exclaims.  “Why?”

Jessica runs her tongue along her teeth.  She hesitates before swallowing – takes a bottle of water she keeps on hand for just this reason and takes a swig out of it first, overcoming the bitter of her Dip scars with something calmer, cooler, smoother.  She can’t take a sip every time she needs to swallow, but it helps when the acrid taste feels too overwhelming.  “I’m not much for parties.”

There’s a world of weight in those words, and Roger catches it – some of it, perhaps even all of it, if he lets his mind darken that far.  His ears droop, and his eyes take in the small white scars crisscrossing up Jessica’s arms.  “B-b-but – it’s a Toon party!  No humans!  And I wouldn’t let anything happen to you!”

“No, Roger.”  Jessica hesitates again and chooses not to run a hand along his long ears or ruffle his bright hair.  She doesn’t say more, doesn’t say what she’s thinking – that most Toons don’t make enough money for presents, that she doesn’t have enough experience with Toon materials to know how to craft them herself, to modify them for other Toons’ use.  For all that she might be a Toon, Jessica has primarily lived among humans, spent herself on humans, acted…human.  She doesn’t even know what another Toon would want.  “Have fun without me.”

Roger’s brows furrow.  He wants to argue, that much is clear, but he respects her.  He doesn’t.  Instead, his eyes light up.  Literal Christmas lights, dangling in the back of his pupils, swinging back and forth.

“Do not bring the party to me, Roger.”

The light in Roger’s eyes doesn’t vanish.  “I won’t!”  He grins.  “Gotta go.  Bye!”  He races off, Betty’s invitation flying in the air behind him, fire sprouting from his heels and leaving lines behind him.

Funny.

Jessica stares after him, uncertain and a little bit queasy.  Whatever he’s thinking, she’ll have to be prepared.  For anything.  (Not really anything – Roger wouldn’t hurt her.  Or put her at risk.  But still.  Anything.)

~

Now, Jessica has a bit more money than she’s had in her entire life.  Her previous owners made sure she had a place to stay, but they paid for that themselves, and they allowed her to buy her own clothes, but they gave her pence to do that with.  She very rarely if ever had anything left over to purchase anything, and honestly – if they could have gotten away with it, they wouldn’t have paid her anything at all.  The clothes and apartment were more for customer satisfaction than they were for Jessica herself; they certainly didn’t give her enough for food or water.  Toons don’t need to eat, after all.  Customers who wanted food for their own purposes were required to bring that themselves.  But Eleanor actually pays Jessica as much of a living wage as she can, compensating her the same way that, perhaps, humans might be compensated, which means she has something.

Something.

Now, for the most part, Jessica doesn’t feel comfortable buying Toon products.  She still doesn’t understand the logistics of them – there’s no point in trying to understand the logic of them because most Toons don’t run on logic, which is the main appeal.  (Which is also why she can’t guess at what Roger is doing; she might try to think things through logically, but Roger doesn’t run on that at all.  Whatever she guesses, she’ll be wrong.  Probably.  Probably.  The closest she can think would be something to do with a present – but that’s too straightforward for the Roger she knows.)

But she does understand sewing techniques.  Her previous owners would rather her sew her clothes back together than pay for more when a customer ripped them apart.  Point of fact,

And while she doesn’t quite understand the world that should have been hers, she understands the one she’s been given.

Jessica buys Painted thread and cloth, and she learns as she goes.

~

Painted cloth does not lay straight.  Or flat.  Or well.

It is nothing like normal cloth.

But it reacts like normal cloth with Painted thread.

This makes no sense.

But it does what Jessica needs, so the sense – or lack thereof – doesn’t matter.

~

Roger shows up at Jessica’s apartment, unprompted, roughly a week later, shortly before Betty’s party is meant to start.  For all that Jessica never planned on going and still does not want to go, she kept track of the date and time, just in case Roger decided to try something then.  Which, of course, he seems to have done.

Maybe Jessica is getting a handle on Toon logic.  Or maybe, by spending time with her, Roger is starting to think like her, too.

Hm.

“I-I-I don’t mean to b-b-bother you,” Roger says as soon as she opens the door, “b-b-but I thought.”  He drops off all at once, not a trailing anything, not a cut off, just a stopped sentence as though that is all the sentence is supposed to be, and maybe it is.  His human denim overalls barely have any denim remaining in them, but he’s found a way to accent that with a denim blue bowtie dangling loose about his neck, less like a tie and more like a necklace with a large bow stuck in the center of it.  He blushes a bright red that curls through his ears, and then he holds out a package.  “For you.”

The package itself is beat up and torn in a couple of places, but a bright red ribbon, unharmed by anything at all and not even smoldering on the edges, ties the whole thing together.  Weirder still, the ribbon and the cardboard package are both of human make, not anything Toon-related in the slightest.  Jessica takes it in one hand – it isn’t heavy; in fact, it’s lighter than paper, which is lighter than cardboard to begin with, so maybe there is something Toon-based within.

“Oh!” Jessica exclaims, handing the package back.

“You don’t like it?”  Roger’s ears droop again, and he pulls on one of them with his free hand.

“I have something for you, too!”

“Oh!”

“Just one moment.”

It isn’t until Jessica returns with her own carefully wrapped present that she realizes she’d slammed the door in Roger’s face.  Her cheeks warm with embarrassment when she opens the door and finds him still standing there, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other.  She holds him his present out without looking at it.  “Here.  For you.”

Then, when Roger trades his package for hers, Jessica steps back inside.  “Um.  Thank you.”  She shuts the door again just as Roger is trying to say something, but she leaves it shut anyway.  It isn’t as though she’s never gotten a present before – or something that’s meant to look like a present but isn’t – but she doesn’t feel comfortable opening it in front of anyone.

In front of him.

Even more, Jessica doesn’t want to see Roger open her present to him, doesn’t want to see the possible confusion or disappointment in his face if he doesn’t like what she made – and she’s pretty sure what she’s made for him is…not great, even on the scale of not great things.  It’s amateurish and ugly and—

There comes a rapid knocking on her door, a sort of rhythm and beat, and without a second thought, Jessica completes the pattern before opening the door again.

“Can I use your bathroom?”

Roger holds his present tight against his chest.  His gaze sweeps across the still unopened package in Jessica’s hands, but he doesn’t say anything about it at all.  Then his eyes return to hers, and a bright grin lights up his face.

Jessica opens the door wide and gestures with one hand.  “Sure.”

It’s while he’s gone that she finally opens her own package, finding sparkling lavender gloves within.  Tooncraft, something far better than anything she could conjure up.  She puts one of them on and finds that when she pulls on the edge, the glove lengthens and stays wheresoever she leaves it.  So she pulls it up nearly as high as she can, covering every scar the Dip left behind.  When she hears the toilet flush and the door open, she turns with a warm, “Thank you,” only to stop halfway through.  Her lips press together.  “I…I  hadn’t expected them to actually fit,” she whispers.

She also hadn’t expected them to look good.

Roger’s exchanged his patchwork human denim overalls for the bright red Toon overalls Jessica has made for him.  He grins awkwardly and then runs to her.  “You put on the gloves!”

“One of them,” Jessica says, averting her gaze.  She holds up her other, bare hand, which holds prick marks from all the trouble she’d gotten from the overalls.  Noticing those, she quickly lowers them.  “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

But Roger pulls off one of his own bright yellow gloves.  “Look!” he says.  “We match!”  He holds up his own furry hand, covered with similar prick marks, and beams up at her.

Jessica’s brow furrows.  “Roger, if you can sew, why did you ask me to add all of those patches?”

“Because I like yours b-b-better!”  Roger pulls the patchwork overalls out from one of his new pockets.  He points to two of the patches.  “They say you care.”

Jessica looks at the patches, looks at the glove that she’s wearing, and then looks at the matching prick marks on their hands.  She smiles.  “I suppose they do.”

She doesn’t kiss him yet – doesn’t kiss him now – and might not for a long time yet, but she does reach out and ruffle his carrot-colored fluff of hair before sending him on his way.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #who framed roger rabbit #roger rabbit #jessica rabbit #wfrr #lucky rabbits #in which we see that i cannot write roger well #which is why most of the time i simply do not

[aparticularbandit]

Instigation: Chapter Three

Summary: Steve sends Wanda to seek out an old witch he once knew, and eventually, Wanda brings said old witch back to meet her family.

Wanda Maximoff/Agatha Harkness

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter / next chapter

December 31, 2015.

Five months go by in the blink of an eye.

Wanda’s magic lessons persist, as they must, as she learns greater control, but now, instead of flinching with desire whenever Agnes touches her, she leans into it.  Agnes brushes hands along her arms, her hands, her waist to correct her form, and Wanda turns in her grasp to kiss her, just so she can see the smug purr of a smirk twisted along Agnes’s face.  Every session ends with something sweeter than tea and honey, something Wanda hadn’t known to search for.

For once, Wanda feels good.  Like she’s found somewhere she belongs.

But in those same five months, Wanda’s experiences with the Avengers vary.  Steve catches her after her magic lessons, as though he’s afraid of what might be happening there.  Sometimes, Wanda still sees Natasha outside Agnes’s apartment complex, and she thinks it would be easier to just invite her inside.  Then one of the others would know Agnes, too; then one of them would be on her side.  As it is, Steve comes across as an overbearing mother hen more often than not (it’s his earnestness, really, but the longer it goes on, the more suppressing it feels); Rhodey nags in a way that should remind her of Pietro, if it didn’t hurt so much (sometimes, she thinks he doesn’t know the difference between a joke and a jab; sometimes, she thinks he doesn’t realize they’re on the same side); Sam soothes things over with Rhodey and tends to take him to one side to try and correct some of his behavior (which half of the time leaves Rhodey feeling more resentful than helpful); and Vision….

Wanda doesn’t even know where to begin with Vision.  He’s a child stuck in an adult’s body, full of the wonder and joy and excitement that she lost the day her parents died, discovering so many new things – sometimes discovering everything all at once – and analyzing and questioning and learning.  In another life, she might be attracted to that, to seeing the world through his eyes, to being reminded that it can be good after spending so long in a life where it was bad.  Sometimes, she’s grateful she has Agnes; she’s certain that if anything happened with Vision, she would end up sucking the life out of him.

And every single one of them voices their opinion on Wanda’s visits with Agnes, on the ambiguous nature of it, even though those opinions aren’t always voiced to her.  Wanda keeps the specifics to herself as much as possible; she doesn’t want their budding relationship to be another point of contention, something else for them to examine or analyze.  They already analyze the possible teacher-student relationship of two witches; they already dissect what they might possibly be doing from the very little Wanda has said (and the great amount they can guess she hasn’t said).  Something tells her it would be much, much worse if she even so much as implied there was more to their relationship than that.

But fall comes, and with it, colder air, the first sprinklings of snowflakes, and warm puffs of breath that can transfigure a normal everyday activity, a habit without thinking, into creating clouds.  Holidays rest around the darkest day of the year to add some joviality to an otherwise depressing time.  Tony decides to throw a Christmas party, which Wanda sees as a public relations stunt and refuses to go, choosing to while away the time with Agnes instead.

Then Steve decides to throw a New Years Eve party, just for the Avengers, and asks if Wanda will invite Agnes.  She’s your friend, he says, and if she can make it, we would love for her to join us.  He means it as gently as possible, but it feels a bit like being asked to bring her girlfriend home to meet her parents, complete with the Please tell her not to bring any fireworks.

(Wanda and Agnes haven’t actually started using the term girlfriend yet.  They haven’t had that discussion.  Right now, Wanda is fine not knowing what they are, secure in simply knowing that they are.  Anything more concrete feels like asking for trouble.  So does inviting Agnes over for their party.)

Still, Wanda brings it up with Agnes in a roundabout way – Agnes can always tell when she’s preoccupied with something or other (in party because it comes through in her magic), and when she’s concerned, as she becomes then, she sits her down on the couch with a cup of chamomile tea (not peppermint, because it makes Wanda’s lips tingle in a not so pleasant way) to talk about it.  She’s not shocked when Wanda brings it up, only surprised it took them so long to ask, and she accepts the invitation immediately with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

Which is how Wanda finds herself standing alone on the first floor of the Avengers Complex, waiting for Agnes to arrive.

Of course, standing is a bit of a misdirect.  While she is most definitely standing, it is much more accurate to say that she is pacing, walking back and forth from one end of the entryway to the other, wringing her hands together and pretending that there aren’t minute scarlet sparks flicking from them every now and again like a static shock.  She’s not sure what makes her more nervous – the idea of everyone meeting Agnes or the idea of Agnes meeting them.

For all that maybe she shouldn’t have said anything at all, Wanda’s been much more open with Agnes than she has with the other Avengers; Agnes is aware, to some degree, of her friction with Rhodey, her frustrations with Steve and Natasha.  Even if it’s only in small part, she knows about it in a way that Wanda hasn’t been open with them about her feelings for Agnes.

And she hasn’t…she hasn’t had the heart to tell Agnes about that lack of honesty.  It would only make it sound as though she doesn’t care about her, and that’s – that’s not true.  It’s just complicated.

Agnes would understand that, right?

(Wanda wouldn’t, if Agnes were the one saying it to her.)

So Wanda stands and Wanda paces and Wanda fiddles with her hands and scarlet sparks fly about them because her magic is linked to her emotions and while this is absolutely not the most nervous she has ever been in her life, it may be the most nervous she has been since she’s gotten her powers.

With, of course, the exception of joining the Avengers in the first place, just before Vision awoke for the first time.

Wanda only stills when the door opens with a rushing whoosh.  Even then, she’s not completely still; she still twists the rings about her fingers, starting with the thickest ring on the smallest finger and then moving along them.  She tugs her lower lip between her teeth until she sees Agnes, and even then, though she tries to relax, part of her remains tense – a part that grows even tenser when the first thing Agnes does on seeing her is throw her arms around her and kiss her.

She hates that she tenses.  She hates that she tenses.

Agnes leans back, looks up, and searches her eyes.  “Wanda, hon,” she murmurs, “is something wrong?”

It’s only then that Wanda notices how Agnes shivers against her, despite the heavy violet peacoat keeping her warm; it’s only then that Wanda notices the snowflakes scattered about Agnes’s shoulders, melted into the waves of her dark hair such that they seem to sparkle; it’s only then that she really relaxes, enough to kiss Agnes a little more properly.  “I’m afraid,” she confesses, gaze dropping.  “I shouldn’t….  That’s not your fault.”

“Well, that makes two of us, hon.”  Agnes brushes her nose against Wanda’s and then kisses its very tip, smiling fondly when Wanda wrinkles her nose, when she scowls.  “I think, as long as we stick together, we should be just fine.”  She brushes a hand through Wanda’s hair.  “How does that sound, my little Wendybird?”

Wanda offers her the gentlest of smiles, and even though the nervousness creeps up her spine again, she forces it back down.  “You know what, Nessie?” she asks, leaning into Agnes’s touch.  “I think that sounds very good.”

~

The living room upstairs should be something to write home about, but it isn’t.  For sure, there is a very Stark quality to the whole place, but that’s not a comforting sort of thing.  It makes the complex cold and uncertain, all sharp angles and large windows and bright metal, as though they’ve been transported into some sort of futuristic landscape.

Wanda might have lived here for nearly a year at this point, but she still can’t call it home.  There’s no warmth here, even in the bedroom she’s tried to decorate more to her liking, and without warmth, it can’t truly be a home.  It’s much too sterile for that.  (She knows full well this is an additional appeal to Agnes’s apartment.  For all that she might find stains here and there, for all that it might not be tidy and Agnes might leave clothes piled up and overflowing her hamper, for all that sometimes she opens the fridge and something’s been left in there for three weeks too long (and she doesn’t understand how this can be possible when she’s there nearly every day, but there’s magic in that, too) – for all that, Agnes’s apartment feels lived in, feels warm, feels like home.  Stark’s Avengers Complex just feels like a cleaner more military version of where Wanda’s been contained for the past several years.  (She’s never told them that.  She will never tell them that.))

Sam lays sprawled out on one of the couches as they make their way upstairs, half hanging on it and half hanging off of it, one arm curled around its back as though that’s the one thing still holding him in place.  He glances up as they approach and smiles, although he doesn’t relax.  “Is this Agnes?” he asks, loping himself into a much better and more normal sitting position, leaving room on either side of him for them to sit before scooting over to one corner.  “Wanda’s Agnes?”

“Yes,” Agnes purrs as she removes her peacoat, and she settles on one the couch opposite him, placing her coat on its arm.  “And I take it you’re....”  Her brow furrows as though she’s considering, and she taps her chin twice.  “You’re Steve, right?”

That draws a chuckle from Sam, and he instantly relaxes much more fully.  “Don’t watch much tv, do you?”

Agnes shrugs.  She leans back and crosses one leg over the other – her little black skirt pushes a little higher up her thigh, and Wanda pretends to not pay attention – and then answers, “I don’t have a tv, my dear man.  Rots the brain and all that.”

Sam’s brows shoot up, and he gives Wanda a look.

“Where is Steve?” Wanda asks, ignoring him.  She crosses her arms and glances around.  When she’d gone downstairs, Steve was here, sitting in one of the chairs; Vision decided to cook something, and Natasha thought it best that someone keep an eye on him, but Steve…Steve had been here.  (Rhodey was off somewhere with Tony, who had chosen not to show up.  Probably something about a New Year’s Eve party he was throwing.  Or one he needed to attend.  Good publicity.  The Avengers don’t need someone dedicated to PR when they have Tony, apparently.)

“Sam!” Agnes says with a snap and a bright grin.  “You must be Sam.”

“Something about an emergency in the city.”  Sam meets Wanda’s eyes.  “Not big enough to need all of us, but something one of us should take care of.  He’ll be back in a bit.”  Then he turns back to Agnes.  “Now tell me how this not having a tv thing works out.”

Wanda can’t help it – something in her stomach twinges at Steve’s absence.  She glances out the large wall of windows into the darkness on the other side, not focusing on the forest nearby or the stars in the sky, just. thinking.  Agnes, she reaches out gently into the other witch’s mind, that wasn’t you, was it?  Like with the storm?

Of course not, hon, Agnes responds while easily carrying on her conversation with Sam.  Why would I cause a commotion in the city?  I want to be here with you.  Mentally, she chuckles, which sounds weird given that her expression does not change at all.  Or I want you to be here with me.

Wanda nods to herself, but something in her doesn’t settle, and it doesn’t settle for a long time.

~

Natasha eventually leaves the kitchen with a groan, gently massaging her forehead, which indicates that Vision’s attempts to cook are not going well.  She catches Wanda’s eyes before glancing over to Agnes with a gentle smile that, like Sam’s, doesn’t feel real at first.  It’s the same sort of fake smile that Wanda herself would like wear if she were meeting any of their partners, if they had partners – the same one she would wear if she were ever to meet Steve’s Peggy – although, technically speaking, none of them know that she and Agnes are involved.

On second thought, Wanda thinks it’s quite likely that Natasha knows.  She might not have said anything, and she might be trying her best to be subtle, but Natasha is an international spy.  Even without trying, Natasha could probably have picked up that Wanda liked Agnes, and now, being in the room with them, she’ll very easily pick it up, if she hasn’t already.

By this time, Sam’s already relaxed in Agnes’s presence.  He may have thought the whole television thing was weird, but then Agnes got into the technicalities of using the threads of magic to read what’s been going on in the world so much clearer than reading a newspaper, and his eyes glazed over.  It was easier once Wanda changed the conversation to sit-coms; then Agnes got to talk about The Munsters, her personal favorite, and Sam brought up M*A*S*H, which sure, was an old show, but his family had so many of them saved, and Agnes knew the show – had actually seen it, unlike Wanda, who only knew of it.  They may not be talking like old friends, but they’re certainly talking with a familiarity that Wanda still doesn’t have with Sam.

Natasha sits next to Wanda, as though feeling the subtle tones of jealousy that Wanda wouldn’t have even acknowledged she had, and squeezes her shoulder gently.  “Your girl?” she asks, leaning in and speaking so soft that the others can’t hear her.

“Yeah.”  Wanda blushes the slightest bit.  “That obvious?”

“Nah.”  Natasha shrugs one shoulder and then settles into the conversation.  It takes her a while longer to relax in Agnes’s presence, but she does.  Eventually.  At least as much as Wanda has ever seen Natasha relax in a group setting.  Sometimes, she’s not sure she’s ever really seen Natasha relax; sometimes, she thinks even that is feigned.

For her benefit, of course.  Not because Nat is trying to lie to her.  But because sometimes, when you’re worried about something, you don’t want that worry to spread.  Sometimes, you want to keep your suspicions to yourself.  Sometimes, you don’t even know how to relax anymore.

Vision comes in later, with an apron tied about his waist and apologies strung from his lips as though they’ve been sewn there.  It’s then that Agnes’s eyes truly light up, and she volunteers to join him, to show him ­not how to correct any mistakes he’s made, but how to take what he has and make the most of it.  Something about waste not, want not but in a much more creative manner.  Wanda reaches her hand out as they leave to stop her, but Natasha makes her pause.  “Don’t worry,” she says with a gentle nod.  “He’s not going to do anything, and if she can get him to listen, then it’ll be a small miracle.”

“Maybe I want a miracle,” Wanda murmurs, unable to look up.  She does so only briefly, staring after Agnes as she walks away, mouth suddenly growing dry.

It’s uncomfortable, letting Agnes walk off with Vision with no way of knowing what they’re talking about, no way of being there to diffuse any potentially bad conversations.  No, not uncomfortable.  Terrifying.  But she won’t…she won’t hover around Agnes the way she instinctively wants.  She won’t.  That’s not a way to let her new family – if they can be called that – get to know the woman she maybe loves.

(Love feels like a leap.  They’ve only known each other a few months.  But she certainly absolutely likes her a lot.  And she wants all of them to like her, too.)

And – for the most part – it seems as though things will go that way.  Sam seems to get along with Agnes.  Natasha seems to have relaxed around her as much as she can.  And Wanda doesn’t hear any unhappy screaming from the kitchen – which is more an indicator that Agnes is getting along with Vision than it is the other way around.

That’s…that’s good.

Then Steve shows up, and everything goes a little sour.

~

It’s closer to midnight than not when Steve shows up, golden hair covered in snowflakes that refuse to melt at first, that still maintain their integral structure long enough for Wanda to almost make out patterns in them – not because she’s standing that close to Steve, because she’s not and doesn’t want to be, but because she’s searching him, looking for something, trying to figure out what sort of mood he might be in.

In some ways, Steve is the most terrifying of all the Avengers because Wanda has never seen him truly mad.  Not even small mad over stupid stuff, like when a can opener won’t open the can (probably because he can tear the top of the can off with his bare hands) or when the television gets all staticky and loses the signal (probably because their television never loses its signal and even when it gets close, Vision shows up and fixes it before anything gets too problematic) or when he tries to hammer something into the wall and slips and hits his finger instead (mostly because the complex is full of Stark technology that doesn’t require hammer and nails and Tony would probably get very mad if they tried to hammer a nail into the wall).  He isn’t always happy; more often than not, he’s pensive, and when he talks about it, it’s about the past – a past she doesn’t know, none of them know, not really.

It reminds her of Pietro, of how she feels about him.

Steve’s not mad or happy or pensive when he returns from whatever he was doing in the city, but when he sees Wanda, his eyes light up.  “Was she able to—?”

“Nessie’s in the kitchen with Vision.  Trying to rein him in.”  Wanda can’t help it; her lips curve up when she mentions Agnes, and she starts to fiddle with her rings again.  “I’m sure that’s…that’s going well.”

Natasha reaches over and pats her leg.  “They’re fine.  We’d know if they weren’t.”

“Nessie?” Sam echoes, brows shooting up again.  “She’s Nessie now?”

Wanda opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it again, brushing her fingers through her hair.  “She’s…I mean…we spend a lot of time together, so Nessie’s just—”

“Did someone say my name?”

Agnes strides into the room arm in arm with Vision, the brightest of grins on her face.  She nudges him with her hip when they stop.  “This hunk of metal and I—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call myself a hunk of metal,” Vision says, and if it were possible, Wanda would say he was blushing.  His gaze drops, and he runs his hand over his head the way someone else might push their hand through their hair.

“You’re certainly a hunk, hon.  All of you in here such beautiful people,” Agnes starts to say, letting her gaze sweep the room, letting it land on Wanda as her grin softens, letting it move on to Steve, where it seems to freeze.  “You must be—”  Her head tilts, and her expression softens.  “Hello, Steve.”  Even her voice seems to change, darker and huskier and deeper.  It’s odd.

No.

It’s wrong.

Wanda’s gaze moves from Agnes to Steve, who stands there with his jaw working.  She doesn’t understand what’s wrong.  “Steve—”

“Agatha.”  Steve stares directly at Agnes, his eyes darker than Wanda has ever seen them.

That’s the wrong name.

Wanda glances over to Agnes, brow furrowing.  “Nessie—”

“It’s good to see you again, Steve.”  Agnes’s expression contorts, twists, almost.  “It’s been such a long time.”

It’s only then that Wanda realizes that no one else is moving.  She stands and looks around – it’s not that they aren’t moving, it’s that they’re frozen.  “Nessie, what did you do?”

Agnes turns to her then, finally, and her expression softens.  “Conversation for us old folks, love,” she murmurs.  Then she reaches over and presses a finger just in the center of Wanda’s forehead.  “I’m sorry, dear, but Steve and I need a few moments to catch up.”

“What do you—”

Sudden sleepiness overtakes Wanda.  She stumbles, and just like that first time in Agnes’s kitchen, Agnes catches her.  It’s less comforting this time.  She looks up at Agnes, brow furrowing.  “Why...?”

But that’s all she can get out before she can’t keep her eyes open any longer.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #instigation with wanda and co #mcu #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #steve rogers #natasha romanov #sam wilson #vision mcu #mcu vision #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #agatha harkness x wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x agatha harkness

[aparticularbandit]

For Fake: Chapter Six

Summary: America lied about having a girlfriend to get her moms off her back, but when they want to meet said girlfriend, she asks her good friend Viv to step in and help.

Viv Vision/America Chavez

Chapter Rating: G. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

previous chapter / next chapter

punchesstars: hey punchesstars: u wanna come over punchesstars: or hang out punchesstars: or something

punchesstars: joey did the thing! punchesstars: new america food 4 u! punchesstars: u should try it!

punchesstars: viv punchesstars: hey viv punchesstars: u there?

punchesstars: u ignoring me?

punchesstars: viv??????

~

It shouldn’t feel like a break up.

Technically speaking, it isn’t a break up.

(That’s Viv speak – technically speaking – because America’s not one to actually care about the technicalities of anything.  She just knows that, like, “technically speaking” is a thing, definitely, but, like.  She doesn’t talk like that.  Only the eggheads talk like that.  You know.  Amadeus.  Riri.  Viv.

Agatha, sometimes, when she’s in one of her moods, but you did not hear that from America, got it?)

So, like, yeah, it isn’t a break up.  They haven’t even officially broken up!  Or, uh, fake? broken up?  However you word that.  Viv would know.  They haven’t broken up their fake relationship.  Officially.  Or whatever.  But it still hurts when Viv just goes radio silent for no apparent reason.

Okay, so, like, sure, maybe there is a reason, and maybe it’s because her dad wasn’t supposed to find out, but, like, America didn’t know anything about that!  How was she supposed to know?  It’s not like her moms told her they were coming over, which is honestly kind of rude and she should totally have a talk with them about it.  She just. doesn’t want to?  Her moms can be pretty tough when they want to be, and she can’t see that conversation going the way she wants, and it would just end with everyone being all upset, and she doesn’t feel like being more upset than she already is.

Because America is upset.

She’s upset with Viv.

For not texting her back!

For ignoring her!

She didn’t do anything wrong!

Other than lying to her moms about having a girlfriend and then asking Viv to be that fake girlfriend under false pretenses which no one knows about, she’s not talking about it, she’s totally keeping those to herself, thank you very much and then maybe getting a little too deep into this whole thing because maybe it would actually be nice if Viv was her girlfriend.

Maybe.

A little bit.

But you didn’t hear that from her either, and you better not be repeating it around anywhere, because she absolutely will find you and punch you in the nards!

…or something.

~

So here’s the thing: America’s never really been to Viv’s house before.  She knows where it is, obviously, but Viv’s kind of a private person.  She likes gaming and games and, uh, privacy.  And not having a bunch of people at her house.  Or maybe that’s more Vision; he’s always given America major intimidation vibes, and she’s never wanted to go when he’s having, like, an off day, or something like that.  And it’s not like Viv gave her an open invitation or anything like that.

So she’s never gone over.  Never really had any reason to.

Until today.

America knocks on the door a little too hard and a little too much and then steps back and shoves her hands into her jean jacket pockets and scuffs her shoe on the doorstep and stares at the bright welcome mat that tells her maybe she isn’t the only one who never comes to see Viv or Vision.  She nudges the mat with her shoe enough to find that there isn’t a spare key under it, which doesn’t surprise her at all; Viv and her dad seem like the types who would have some sort of electronic key, something smarter than just a keypad with passwords in it, something so smart she can’t even think of it.

But when it takes an awful long time for anything to happen at the door at all, America starts scrounging around.  Definitely, Viv and her dad probably have some sort of complicated way of opening the door, but even more importantly, they also definitely have a camera somewhere.  Probably somewhere super inconspicuous, where no one can even possibly imagine—

Nope.

There it is.

Found it.

Right in the top right corner.  Where most people put their cameras.

Okay, maybe most of them don’t put them in the top right corner, but they usually have them in some corner, and it’s usually in addition to the one that sits in their electronic doorbell.  Which.  Maybe America should have used the doorbell instead, come to think of it.  Oh, well.

America looks up into the camera – the one she can see; there’s probably a gazillion other ones she can’t see – and waves.  “Yo.  Uh.  Mr. Vision?  Or Viv?  Or someone?  Can you, uh.  Can one of you open the door?”  She leans up on her tiptoes.  “See, Viv’s my girlfriend and everything, and she’s been ignoring my texts, which is kind of like avoiding my phone calls, and I thought it’d be a good idea to come and check on—”

The door flies open, and Viv grabs America around the waist and pulls her through.

“Oh, hey, Viv—”

“Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup—”  Viv shakes America violently as the momentum she’d used to open the door causes it to bounce off the outside wall and slam itself shut.  “My dad listens to those, he’ll hear all of that, he doesn’t know I’ve been—”

“What, ignoring me?”  There’s only so long America can vibe with the being violently shaken by her synthezoid not-girlfriend before she starts to feel nauseous.  You’d think that jumping through all of those portals into other universes would get her used to this sort of thing, but that’s not true.  Multiverse hopping is an entire other sort of thing.  Like teleportation.  And roller coasters.  “C-C-C-Can you s-s-s-stop with the…the…the—”

Viv stops.  She drops her hands from America’s shoulders.  Wraps one arm around herself and looks away from America.  “Sorry.”

“Thanks.”  America rubs the back of her neck awkwardly.  She looks around the front room – the living room – and finds that it looks…normal.  It’s just a normal living room.  Normal couch.  Normal coffee table.  Normal place for all the television stuff.  Normal television – not even a super big one, just, you know, an average-sized television.  Maybe even a little smaller than hers.  “Wow,” she says, turning back to Viv.  “Your house is, uh—”

“Aggressively normal?” Viv completes for her with a huff of a chuckle.  “Father would like people to believe that we are just the same as they are.  He hid most of the gifts in the basement.”

America blinks.  “Gifts?”  She turns to Viv with a half-grin.  “What sort of gifts?”

Viv shakes her head.  “Nothing.  There is nothing in the basement.”  She keeps looking away from America, refusing to meet her eyes.  “Why are you here?”

“You stopped answering my texts.”  America crosses over to the couch and slumps down into it.  Then she scowls.  For all that the couch looks normal, it isn’t comfortable.  “It’s been, like, days, Viv.”  She presses down on the cushions a few times.  “And your couch is kind of shitty.”

Viv shrugs.  “Father did not ask for the help of a human before buying the couch.  It is only for appearances.  We do not use it.”  She sits on the opposite side of the couch but shows no signs of discomfort.  “I do not sense a problem.”

“Ugh.”  America makes a disgusted expression by curling her lip.  “Your bed isn’t like that, right?  Your bed’s pretty soft?”

“Is that a normal question?”  Viv should be looking at America when she asks that question.  She should be tilting her head to one side, confused and concerned and intrigued.  But she isn’t.  She’s just staring at her hands where they’re clasped in her lap.

This is wrong.  Something’s wrong.

And America doesn’t know what it is.

“I…I guess not.”  America’s brow furrows.  She presses her lips together.  “Hey, uh, Viv?  You know you can tell me anything, right?  Like, maybe not….”  She cuts herself off.  “No, anything.  You can tell me anything.  Really.  I won’t, like, go anywhere or anything.”  Without a second thought, she reaches over to place her hand over both of Viv’s.  She hesitates, when she realizes what she’s doing, but then goes through with it anyway.

Viv’s hands are colder than normal.  She shouldn’t be able to realize that, but she does.

“I think we should break up,” Viv says, still not looking at America, still gazing down at her lap.  It’s as though America’s hand being there doesn’t mean anything, hasn’t done anything.  She nods to herself once then repeats herself, “I think we should break up.”

“Uh.  Okay?  Sure?”  America doesn’t know what’s going on.  “I mean, we were always going to break up ‘cause we weren’t really together, so, like, that’s.  That’s fine.”  She won’t say it doesn’t hurt, but, like, she’s not going to push Viv into a relationship she doesn’t want.  All those fake dating tropes are fine in movies and stories and everything, but she probably shouldn’t have expected to actually work in, like, the real world.  “But you’ve still been ignoring me—”

“I think we shouldn’t talk for a while,” Viv continues.  She still doesn’t look up.

It takes a moment for America to process that.  “You think we should…huh?”

“I think we shouldn’t talk for a while,” Viv repeats.  If anything, her voice has gotten more monotone.  Then she unhooks the rainbow necklace America gave her and sets it on the couch between them.  “And I think you should take this back.”

America stares at the necklace.  She had it a long time before giving it to Viv; it was one of the first things she bought on one the very first universe where she’d been able to have money.  After food, it probably was the first.  It’d been a reminder to herself.  It’d given her hope.

But she doesn’t need it anymore.  She’s here now, with a new family who are helping her learn how to use her powers so maybe, someday, she’ll be able to get out there and find her moms.  Her first moms.  (Sometimes she thinks of them as her real moms, but Wanda and Agatha – they’re her real moms, too.  It’s a complicated thing.)

“No.”  America shakes her head, leaving the necklace between them.  “I gave you that.  Keep it.”  She reaches into her pockets and finds the rainbow gloves Viv gave her.  “But if, uh.  If we’re returning stuff, I guess I should give you these?  Yeah?”  She sets them down on the couch just next to the necklace.

Viv doesn’t say anything.

That’s the most frustrating thing of all – that Viv won’t say anything, and she’s actually here, and Viv could say something if she wanted.  But she won’t.

America stands.  She brushes off the front of her jeans.  Bites her lower lip.  “I guess I should, uh.  I should go?”

Viv nods.

America wants to say something.  She wants to take Viv’s shoulders and shake her, just the same way Viv shook her earlier, wants to make Viv explain all of this to her.  But that won’t do any good.  She knows it won’t.  Still.  “Look, uh.  I know you’re mad at me or…or something, but I don’t know what I did, and I’d really like to know what it is so that I don’t do it again.”  She shoves her hands in her pockets and glances down at her worn out old shoes.  “Even if we’re not, uh.  If we’re not talking, you should.  Text me about that, I guess.”

Please.

~

Viv doesn’t let herself look after America as her friend leaves.  It’s enough to just sit here and have the conversation at all.  She’s had her emotional core shut off for so long that all of the feelings – hers, America’s, all of them – are so overwhelming that she can barely breathe.  She doesn’t need to breathe, but she should.  For appearance’s sake.

After America leaves, Viv picks up the necklace.  She stares at it for a few moments.  Then she shoves it into her pocket along with her gloves and heads to the basement.

(She will never say it to him, but sometimes living in the basement with everything else her father has hidden makes her wonder if her continued existence causes him just as much pain as the things he’d used to decorate their house when the rest of their family was alive.)

Sparky sniffs at her hands as Viv walks down the stairs, and she runs her hands through his fur.  When she gets into bed, he curls up with her, just against her chest.  She wonders about it then, pressing her hand into her mattress.  Is my bed soft?  She’s never really thought about it all that much.  She hadn’t liked it, when she was human, but she hadn’t ever considered it might be something she could change.

Maybe that’s something she can look into.  In the future.

Yeah.  In the future.

#bandit fic #december banditnanza 2023 fic #for fake with viv and america #marvel #marvel comics #mcu #wandavision #america chavez #viv vision #america chavez x viv vision #viv vision x america chavez #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #vision mcu #mcu vision #harximoff #wandagatha #wagatha #they're not in this chapter but #etc.

[aparticularbandit]

Christmas Traditions

Summary: Agatha and Cian celebrate their first Christmas with their still unborn daughter.

Agatha Harkness/Ancient One

Rating: G. TW: Eating Disorder and Dysphoria.

AO3

What Agatha hates most about being pregnant is how much more she has to eat.  She’s gotten used to eating again over the years, although her ability and desire to do so ebbs and flows.  When she’s stressed or upset, it gets worse, and so she barely eats – whenever she has a miscarriage, which happens often, it takes days of Cian convincing her to eat something, to give her grieving body more than just bone broth.  But there’s something warm and familiar and comforting in the broth, in the salty thickness of it, and it warms its way through her tired bones.

Now, however, while Agatha is pregnant, while her stomach is swollen far larger than she ever thought it could be, Cian has returned to cooking breakfast for her every morning - a mixed mish-mash of things that sometimes even the smell of which makes her nauseous.  The early weeks of her pregnancy were filled with so much vomiting that she remembered why she’d never used that as an option; the taste of bile thick in the back of her throat and on her lips never went away, no matter how many times she scrubbed them with a toothbrush, no matter how much broth she drank (because at least she was able to keep that down).  But now, in the last trimester, she feels less nauseous and more engorged.  She can’t see her feet over her stomach.

And every now and again, that makes her stomach roil and writhe with discomfort.

She might want a child – she might even desperately want a child – but this isn’t her.  This isn’t her body.  It’s something else, and a part of her, no matter how much she doesn’t like to think about it, wants it out.

~

Christmas Eve finds Agatha curled up on the couch, bemoaning the state of things, unable to do what she would love to do and lie on her stomach, burying her head in her pillow, because even trying to do so makes her feel all sorts of uncomfortable.  it’s almost worse when Cian sits next to her on the couch and sets a plate full of…she doesn’t even know what right now, all food looks unbearable, but Cian places it on her stomach, where it not only fits but where it balances.

You should eat something.

Agatha sinks lower against the couch.  The plate on her stomach rustles but settles.  She would have felt better if it fell.  I’m not hungry.

Cian takes a bite of their own food and then tacks her plate with their fork.  You are upset and frustrated, which frequently happens when you are hungry.

I think I know if I’m hungry better than you do.

Cian turns just enough to give her a look, not one that is startled or shocked or sad or disappointed or anything like that, but somehow a combination of all of the above.  Of course, you do, dear.  They don’t have to say it – But you have a long history of ignoring that knowledge – to have it sit heavy in the air between them.

With a sigh, Agatha picks the plate up and sits a little straighter – a little more comfortably – on the couch.  This position won’t be comfortable for long.  None of them are.  More often than not, she feels like she’s about to burst, and no amount of moving makes that pressure go away.  She picks up a piece of bacon between her forefinger and thumb, stares at it and the grease covering it, and scowls.

What? Cian asks.  You don’t like bacon?

I love bacon, hon, Agatha answers, the scowl not disappearing.  I don’t love all the grease.  She tears a paper towel off from the roll that normally is not in their living room but which has been moved for easier access and dabs it across the bacon before taking a bite.  The grease lies on her tongue, but she crunches her way through the first piece anyway.

When she’s finished with it, Cian reaches across and kisses her cheek.  Good girl.

Agatha blushes.  If you do that with everything I eat, maybe I’ll finish.  She’d never said that the first time Cian began cooking for her, when they were training her how to eat again, when she’d never wanted to eat anything at all without exercising the whole of it off, when she’d forgotten what she looked like without being skin and bones.  She’d never said it then, but she’d wanted to, and now that she can, she’ll take advantage.

No.

Not take advantage.

She will never take advantage of Cian again.

Still, Cian offers her a gentle, soft smile.  Eat something else, and see what happens.

~

Later, Agatha’s eyes sweep among the vast pile of presents beneath the tree.  There’s more than there usually are, but just enough for what will be in the future.  Of course, Cian and Agatha have gotten each other presents, as is normal, but this year, they’ve gone ahead and gotten presents for their child yet to be.  She may not be born yet, but that doesn’t mean this can’t be – and isn’t, in some respects – her first Christmas.

Can we open one now? Agatha asks, one lip curving with mischief.

Cian shakes their head.  You know the rule.  We open presents on Christmas Day, not before.  They meet her eyes.  You wouldn’t want to teach our child to cheat, would you?

No.  Agatha leans her head heavily against Cian.  You know what I want most this year?

What’s that?  Cian runs their hand through her hair.  It fits into each of the smaller tangles and slowly picks through them without any pain at all.

Agatha leans into their touch.  You.

Cian chuckles and kiss the crown of her head.  And I you, my love.

It would be so easy, in this moment, to tilt her head enough to kiss them, but Agatha feels swollen and unlovely and certainly unsexy, so she doesn’t.  Instead, she curls a little closer to them and rests her head against their neck.  Even like this? she asks, not looking up.  Even old and fat and ugly?

You are none of those things, my love.  Cian continues to run their hand through Agatha’s hair.  You are still young – far younger than myself—

Don’t remind me—

—and what you see as fat and ugly, I see as beautiful.  Cian places a hand on her swollen stomach.  You’re carrying our daughter, our tiny Lillian Rose.  There’s nothing fat or ugly about that.

Agatha knows they have seen her avoid the mirror most mornings anymore, unable to see how the change hasn’t happened just to her stomach but has happened to her face as well.  She can’t look at herself because then she isn’t herself.  That face in the mirror staring back at her isn’t her; it’s something else; and she wants to tear at it until it looks the way it should again.  She’s never tried.

(It’s the same as how Cian once found her day in and day out measuring her weight until, eventually, they’d taken the scale and thrown it in the garbage.  They’ve done this less and less frequently during their relationship – and not at all during their marriage – not because the compulsion isn’t still there, but because Agatha has stopped buying scales.  She tries to rest secure in Cian thinking she’s beautiful because that’s what she wants, most days – for them to think she’s beautiful, and fuck what anyone else thinks.

But Agatha, herself, is part of that anyone else, and sometimes, no matter how much she clings so desperately to what Cian thinks, it all creeps back in.

It’s worse now.  She knows it.  They know it.  They’re trying to get by.)

Here, Cian says, their hand still on Agatha’s belly, why don’t we start a movie?  Something for Christmas?

It’s a distraction.  It’s not even a subtle one.  But Agatha still nods.  Muppets, she says, not because it’s her favorite but because she knows how much Cian hates it.  She grins when she sees the look on Cian’s face.  Our daughter’s first Christmas Carol movie should be Muppets.

The best thing about being pregnant is that Cian very, very rarely tells her no.

~

The movie ends shortly after midnight, and then Agatha turns as quickly as her body will allow, and looks up at Cian with eyes as big as she can make them.  Now we open presents?  Please?  She adds a whining tone to her voice, one that she knows Cian likes.

Cian lets out a groan and tangles their hand in her hair.  They give a sharp tug.  You have to wait for Santa, dear.

What if I don’t believe in Santa?

Cian looks down at her.  Their eyes flit from Agatha to her stomach, where their baby still dwells, and then back up to meet her eyes.  Are you truly going to teach our daughter such shenanigans? they ask, raising one eyebrow.  Are you willing to give her permission to stay up this late only to wake us up because technically it’s Christmas?  Even though she hasn’t slept a wink?  You know she’ll stay up even later then, just to play with all of her toys, just to read her new book.

But Agatha holds Cian’s gaze.  One present, then, she argues.  Pajamas.  Or a nice pair of festive socks.

You bought me festive socks?

Agatha just grins.  I bought you pajamas.

Cian stares at her.  They blink twice.  Oh.  Their gaze flicks across her, and their lips curve in the slightest way that shows their pleasure and amusement without ever growing into a big smile.  That’s not how Cian expresses themselves, and Agatha, knowing this, sees that curve at the corner of their lips and preens.

They’re very festive, Agatha pushes.

Fine, Cian says with a sigh that sounds like displeasure but is clearly feigned.  Show me what you bought us.

~

In the morning, with Cian dressed in a Rudolph onesie, complete with a red nose, and Agatha nearly dressed in a Santa onesie, though it’s unbuttoned around her stomach, they settle back in the living room to finally open presents.  Cian makes Agatha wait until after she’s eaten – cinnamon rolls this morning, because it’s Christmas, and because while Agatha, even on a good day, has a hard time not thinking about the calorie intake, she still loves the taste of them, loves the cinnamon and sugar mixture, loves making her way to the center and eating the best bit all at once.  It’s always – even now – a reminder of how far she’s come, and it warms her just as much as it warms Cian.

Before they begin, though, Agatha reaches over and flips a switch on Cian’s onesie.  If we’re going to start, this needs to be on.

The red nose on Cian’s Rudolph onesie begins to blink a bright red.  The color paints their face, and they cross their arms, feigning a pout.  I can’t believe you’ve done this to me.

Agatha just reaches up and kisses their cheek.  Lillian will love seeing you in it.

At her words, Cian’s gaze lowers to Agatha’s bare stomach.  They place their hand there again, and it feels warm against Agatha’s skin.  Should we let her open her presents first? they ask.

Even Agatha feels the kick in response.  She laughs, a small but happy thing.  I think she answered that question!

~

Later, they put all of Lillian’s presents in her room.  It’s already been decorated, but now it’s more so.  Maybe it would be a bit overwhelming to anyone else – and it is to Agatha, too, sometimes – but they’re happy.  They’re excited.  And whichever plushie Lillian decides is her bestest friend forever that neither of her parents can ever take away from her – well, let’s just say said parents have a bit of a wager going on, with some very specific prizes linked to specific toys.

Agatha sets the newest plush toy –a stuffed white bear in a red pajama suit covered with glow in the dark green stars – in Lillian’s crib.  She runs her hand along the wooden exterior and smiles, a small thing.  We’re waiting for you, she says and places her hand on her stomach.  Everyone is waiting for you.  And you are going to be so loved.

Like always, Cian wraps their arms around Agatha.  They settle against her, resting their head on her shoulder.  She’ll join us when she’s ready, dearest.  She’s just like her mama.  They kiss Agatha’s cheek.  She wants to make an entrance.

Agatha chuckles.  Just like you, too, angel.  Then she turns in Cian’s grasp and kisses them.

It’s a small Christmas – bigger than normal, with all of Lillian’s gifts – but it’s right, and it’s theirs.

Nothing could take that away from them.

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