All Of Your Pieces (37 - Where the Pieces Fall)
Chapter Summary: “I think Wanda saw the same truth,” Stephen continues. “When she looked into those worlds where you existed, she must have realized she could never love any of them the way she loved you here. That’s why she let you go. Why she freed you from her. She gave you what she thought was your happy ending.”
You wake to the sound of rain on glass.
Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Female Reader Chapter word count: 4k+ | Chapter Tags/Warnings: None
A/N: The final chapter will delivered maybe by end of October or early November, switching back to Wanda's POV after the events of MoM. Thank you everyone :) // More author's notes here.
Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist
You wake to the sound of rain on glass.
For a moment, you think you’re still in Vermont. You almost expect to roll over into a warm body, the woman who’s been playing the part of your wife for as long as you can remember.
You blink into soft, fractured light spilling through tall stained-glass windows, gold and green twisting in patterns you’ve only seen once before. The sheets are stiff, the air cold and dry, and for all the beauty in the glass, it feels nothing like home.
The Sanctum Sanctorum.
You should be rattled like a fish out of water. Instead, you feel nothing but relief. At last, the dream—however perfect it was—is over.
You push yourself up, head throbbing, the room tilting with the motion. An imposing figure stands in the doorway, arms folded. You don’t need your eyes to fully adjust—the colors alone give away who it is. You used to scoff at the red cape draped over that blue, kimono-like suit.
“How are you feeling?” Stephen Strange asks as he approaches the foot of your bed.
It’s a simple yet strange question. You take stock of yourself before answering.
How do you feel after waking up from a lie?
You guess at the right answer: bitter, betrayed, hollow? But none of them perfectly describes it. The truth is messier. The whole time you were there with Kia, you were happy. Manufactured or not, it was still happiness. And you were grateful for it, even if it wasn’t real.
But there was always this itch despite not knowing anything about your life before Wanda’s gift took effect. It was a kind of void that was small, but glaring. An afterthought that would leave you sad and regretful.
Wanda. You figure she’s that void itself. Maybe she never meant to put it there, but if there’s one thing magic could never erase, it’s the mark she’s left on you.
“Headache? Nausea?” Strange prods after you’ve been quiet for too long.
“Water,” you say. “Please.”
Strange’s mouth tips, not quite a smile. “Of course.” His cape unfurls itself from his shoulders and glides away, fetching you a tall glass.
You drink it in huge gulps, your throat bobbing up and down. By the time you drain it, Strange looks even more impatient than he did a few minutes ago.
“What took you so long?” you mutter, aiming for lightness, but it comes out sharp, petulant—like a whiny child.
He regards your question with a single arched brow. “I wasn’t the first call Agent Woo made. Others came before me. People who decided you’d simply vanished off the grid and weren’t the authorities’ problem anymore.” His tone is dry, almost scornful. “They wrote you off.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t.” His chin tips up, smug for all of two seconds before he clears his throat and waves a hand. “Not that I had it figured out right away. It only made sense once Wanda’s possession of the Darkhold came to light. Then it clicked why no one could locate you. After we dealt with Wanda, we went back to the last place Woo had traced you. One simple spell, and there you were.”
“How long—”
“Were you stuck there?” He finishes your question for you. “Two hundred and fifty-nine days.”
You look down at your hands which still don’t feel like yours.
“Kia?” you ask.
“Home,” Strange says. “Returned safely to her family.”
You feel a pang of guilt for dragging her into this. You’re not sure whether to reach out and apologize, and just imagining the conversation leaves you at a loss for where to start. Maybe leaving her alone is the best form of apology you can offer for now.
“Does she remember?”
“All of it,” he confirms. He catches the objection on your face before you can voice it and adds, “We don’t sugarcoat things here, Y/N. Kia needs to know exactly what she went through if she’s going to accept it and move on. I think she’ll be fine.”
You manage to keep from smirking at his confidence. Instead, you nod, hoping he’s right.
“And Wanda?”
Strange dodges too quickly to be casual. “We’ll come back to that. Right now, there’s something else. I’ve arranged a trial for you.”
You blink. “A trial?”
“Formality,” he says. “One hearing. You’ll stand before the court, answer a few questions, and walk out.”
Your brow furrows. “What do you mean, ‘walk out’?”
“I mean,” Strange says evenly, “they’re letting you go. You’re free, Y/N.”
It takes you a moment longer to understand. So, they’re absolving you after all. After what you thought was the greatest sacrifice you could make—one that meant giving up a future with Wanda—it all comes down to this: you’re free to go. Face your crimes however you want. Off yourself, if you can’t live with your demons. They don’t care what you did, and they certainly don’t care that you’ve regretted it with every bone in your body.
It felt like the biggest fluke. And the humiliation that comes with it is undeniably striking.
“Why?” you ask, although it doesn’t really seem to matter.
“Because you’ve done good, too. Because there are bigger problems now than keeping you in a cell. Because I asked,” he says. “Pick whichever answer helps you breathe easier.”
You shake your head with a sardonic smile. Strange sighs. This is the only good news he’s had for you since pulling you out of Maximoff’s spell, and it’s not landing the way he hoped. It was meant to be the cushion for the real revelation he’s preparing you for.
As for you, none of the choices make breathing any easier.
“Does Clint know?”
“Yes. He supports it. Says he’ll be happy for you if you take this second shot at a true beginning.”
“When is the trial?” you ask.
“Soon. Eat. Shower. Wong will brief you. You’ll answer a few questions, say ‘yes, your honor’ twice, ‘no’ once, and walk out.”
“And after that?”
“That’s up to you.”
You wonder what else has changed in the year you’ve been gone. But that thought leads to another—why Strange, of all the Avengers, was the one to find you trapped in a dollhouse. The question stirs a creeping dread, cold seeping into your feet.
You almost don’t want to ask again, but you know you have to.
“Stephen,” you murmur, voice thin, your lower lip trembling just enough to betray you. Your body feels slack, drained, bracing for the answer. “Where’s Wanda?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes dart to the floor, then to the door, then anywhere but you. The Cloak fusses at his shoulder and he stills it with a hand. He smooths an invisible crease on his sleeve. He clears his throat unconvincingly, buying seconds.
You let the silence make it obvious you’re not taking the detour.
When he finally meets your eyes, you have your answer.
“Wanda is—” He stops, swallows, tries again. “This is going to be hard to hear.”
—
So this is how you lose her. Third time. Last time. And it feels like it tears you apart in a way the others never did.
—
Strange doesn’t speak to you or visit after that morning. In the days that follow, you see him only in passing—which you actually prefer. It’s easier than watching him force a conversation he clearly has no interest in keeping. And after learning that Wanda died on Mt. Wundagore, destroying the Darkhold in every universe, you’re not in the mood for words anyway.
You’ve failed her again. You had this grand plan to save her, to help her, to not abandon her again. But in the end, there was nothing you could do. Confronted with your own mortality and your lack of any real power, you feel small—utterly worthless. Wanda loved a useless, fragile thing.
It’s Wong who keeps you company. He’s not chatty by nature, but compared to Strange’s avoidance, his unassuming presence is almost comforting. He brings you meals, checks in when you’ve been holed up in your room for hours and fills you in with practical details you don’t have the strength to ask for.
By the third day, and after you’ve exhausted yourself thinking how it happened, you gather enough courage to ask how Wanda died. Wong gives you a sad smile. He sets the tray down on your nightstand and takes the chair by the window, hands folded on his knee like you’re about to discuss the weather.
“It began at Kamar-Taj,” he says. “She came for the girl—America Chavez. A child who can open doors between universes.”
As Wong recounts Wanda’s transgressions, shame creeps in. It’s hard enough to hear what she did (claiming countless lives at Kamar-Taj), but harder still to believe she could do it to a child. So the Darkhold was successful in corrupting her, then?
“The book didn’t put those feelings in her,” Wong says, reading what’s on your face. “It just warped what was already there.” It wasn’t entirely Wanda. And yet, it was nothing but her.
You look past him at the rain-slick city. Outside, the downpour has picked up—because of course it has.
Wong’s sad smile lingers as he settles into the chair, and what follows is less a story than a burden shared. He had been forced to bring her to Wundagore, to the ancient temple carved into the mountain where a throne already waited for her. In that place, Wanda was no longer merely herself. She was what the mountain had been built to crown.
She dreamwalked into another version of her life, into the body of a Wanda who had everything she had lost. She crossed a council that tried to stand in her way, and their failure left a trail of devastation behind her. She reached the home she longed for, stepped into a kitchen where two small boys cowered in fear of her. In their terror, she finally saw herself as they did, and the truth of what she had become was undeniable.
“That was her undoing,” Wong recounts.
It was another Wanda who found the courage to show her compassion—who assured her that the boys would be loved. And that was what Wanda had fought for all along. In her final act, she redeemed herself. She let go, because her other self had shown her the boys would be safe, loved, and never alone.
“She destroyed the Darkhold herself. Not just on this Earth, but in all the others,” Wong says. You swear there’s a flicker of awe in his eyes, though you can’t tell if it’s for Wanda’s strength in fighting her own demons—or for the sheer magnitude of erasing something across every iteration of a seemingly infinite multiverse.
Either way, the image stays with you long after Wong finishes speaking. The storm outside deepens, rain hammering against the glass, but your thoughts are elsewhere. You cannot stop turning over the ending she chose. For all the ruin that came before, in the end she was still the woman who loved enough to sacrifice.
But was it a necessary sacrifice? In that, you and Wanda are the same—both too willing to lay yourselves down for things you never fully understood. Or maybe you’re only questioning it now because this sacrifice stole her from you.
And yet, now that you know where she was last seen, a stubborn thought takes root. What if they’re wrong? Until you’ve seen her body with your own eyes, there’s room, however small, for doubt. For hope.
“Take me to Wundagore.”
Across from you, Wong stiffens. His frown is immediate, and he doesn’t bother to hide it. “That’s… not a good idea,” he says carefully. “Strange warned that you might ask for this. Said the decision wasn’t his to make anymore. As Sorcerer Supreme, he left it to me.”
“And what have you decided?”
Wong studies you for a long moment, eyes heavy with something that looks uncomfortably like pity. At last, he inclines his head.
“I’ve decided to grant you this favor.”
—
Wundagore is the coldest place you’ve ever been, yet it doesn’t bite at you the way Scotland or Iceland once did. Wong has cast a protection spell that keeps the chill at bay, sparing you the need for proper gear. A convenient bit of magic—enough to make you consider joining the sorcerer’s classes for this spell alone.
Your eyes sweep across the white wasteland. Wundagore was a mountain—Wong had said it himself—but nothing towers over you now. Only snow and shattered stone, stretching endlessly beneath a ceiling of pale grey clouds. The absence itself feels unnatural. You imagine the sound of it collapsing, the roar as an entire peak tore itself apart under her will. You imagine the final surge of red light, burning against the storm, until even that was buried under silence.
Wong walks ahead without a word, boots sinking into the snow. You follow quietly behind, your silence rooted in the overwhelming feeling that you’re walking towards Wanda’s grave.
The trail stretches on until the slope breaks into a ruin of stone. This, he tells you, is where Wundagore once stood. Now it is nothing but a pile of jagged boulders, most of them buried in snowdrifts, the mountain’s bones scattered and broken.
You stop, staring at the wreckage. “Has there been any effort to recover her body?”
Wong hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. The presumption of death was… enough.”
You turn to him sharply. “Enough?”
“Y/N,” Wong says gently, “an entire mountain came down on her. No one could have survived. And more than that—she made it appear as though she chose to die here.”
“No,” you spit out. “She didn’t choose it. You and Strange let her die here.”
Wong’s gaze hardens, though his voice stays level. “That’s not fair. You weren’t there. You didn’t see the state she was in. The Darkhold had hollowed her out. If she hadn’t brought this mountain down on herself, she would have brought ruin to the rest of us.”
“You don’t know that,” you snap. “You don’t know what she could have been if someone had just tried harder. If someone had stood by her instead of writing her off as a lost cause.”
“We tried. All of us. Strange most of all.”
“Not hard enough.”
Wong exhales, already tired of the exchange. Explaining it would be useless—especially to someone with no grasp of sorcery. The truth is, every trace of her chaos magic has vanished. Nature itself shifted the moment the Scarlet Witch was gone. To deny her death would be to deny the glaring evidence that only the sorcerers could perceive.
“I’ll give you time,” he says at last. “To pay your respects.”
“No, I’ve seen enough,” you say. “Let’s go back.”
Wong raises his left hand and then starts making circles in the air with the other. “As you wish.”
—
“It’s here.”
That’s how Strange announces himself, stepping into your room without so much as a knock, an envelope in hand. He’s in a pristine suit this time. You’re so used to seeing him in sorcerer’s robes and that sentient cape that you almost forget he was a surgeon once. In formal clothes he looks almost ordinary—too civilian—reminding you that, like you, his life used to be simpler too.
“Pardon?”
You haven’t done much lately beyond shutting yourself away in this room, combing through everything you missed in the year you spent playing house with a former lover. The world has shifted in countless ways, and yet somehow feels unchanged. After the final battle with Thanos, many expected an era of peace, but the Avengers found no such rest. There was always something—new threats, new battles—even Wanda’s movements in New York, before Strange uncovered the truth that she was hunting a child named America. The backlog of information keeps you distracted from Wanda’s absence—and from the brutal truth of another reality where you can’t bring her back. When the news runs dry, you fall back on your old hobby: books. It’s a gentler escape than the last time, when half your days were drowned in blood.
Strange doesn’t bother repeating himself. He sets the envelope on the desk, neat and deliberate. You don’t reach for the envelope. Instead, you sit back in your chair, staring at it.
He says, “Your trial date. The court wants to make it quick.”
“Can it go another way?”
Strange looks at you like you’ve asked if gravity might reconsider. “Only if you insist upon it.”
You lean forward. “And if I do?”
“To be honest, they don’t care about what you want, Y/N. They just need to put on record that you’ve been acquitted.”
You’re not surprised. You were gone for a year, and if the authorities had truly wanted to find you, they would’ve gone through Strange long before Wanda raised any alarms.
“So it doesn’t matter what I say.”
Stephen exhales, the sound edged with weariness.
“The judgment’s already written. All that’s left is for you to stand there, nod when prompted, and walk out the door,” he says. Then he surprises you by inviting himself further in and sitting on your single-sized bed.
“I actually came here because I need to kick you out.”
You laugh—loud and sudden—at the flat delivery, at the way his face doesn’t so much as twitch. The lack of reaction makes it even funnier, until you’re nearly doubled over. When the moment passes and the laughter dies down, you sober, eyes still wet.
“You didn’t have to go through all this trouble,” you say quietly, “just to tell me to leave.”
He smiles—an honest one, not the strained kind where only the corners of his mouth move, hiding pain. “Wong won’t do it for me this time.”
You glance down at your bare feet. Well… what happens now?
Strange clears his throat. “Is there anything else you need from me?”
Yes, there’s so much you want to know. Questions press against the back of your teeth. But none of it matters now. She’s gone, and knowing more won’t bring her back. Maybe it will only make the ache worse. Still, the thought circles back to the same truth that you’re leaving soon. This might be your last meeting with Stephen Strange, the only man alive who has seen what lies beyond the boundaries of your world. If you’re ever going to ask, this is the only time. So you decide, shameless as it feels, to let the questions out.
If Wanda searched every reality for the boys, if she dreamwalked into other versions of herself, then surely she must have seen you. You vaguely remember Wanda telling you that in every other universe, it’s always Kia you ended up with. But that couldn’t be true. Statistically, it made no sense. Out of thousands—no, millions—of universes, there had to be at least one where you and Wanda found your way to each other.
“You’ve looked into other universes,” you start, swallowing the lump in your throat.
Stephen sits perfectly still for a few seconds, like he’s debating whether the truth is worth handing you. At last, he says, “I have. More than I should’ve.”
“Wanda told me that in every universe she dreamwalked into, I ended up with Kia,” you say slowly, as though recalling a distant dream. “But that’s ridiculous. I think the Darkhold was lying to her—manipulating her so it could finish corrupting her.”
“You’re both right and wrong,” Stephen says.
You tilt your head, frowning in confusion.
“You’re wrong about the Darkhold fabricating those realities she visited in her sleep,” he continues. “But you’re right about one thing—the Darkhold is manipulative. To understand Wanda’s pain, to try and appeal to what was left of her humanity, I had to study it. I had to see the source of it with my own eyes.”
He pauses here.
“So yes,” he says at last. “I’ve seen those worlds. And no—the Darkhold wasn’t lying. In every one of them, you did end up with the other girl.”
You think of Vermont. You think of the dream, the cottage, the way Wanda crafted it around you like it could last. She wasn’t delusional. She was desperate. And she was right—because even the sorcerer standing before you, a man who’s looked into the abyss of infinite worlds, is telling you that more often than not, she was alone in them.
“So it was real,” you say, though your voice sounds small even to you. “She wasn’t chasing a lie.”
Strange doesn’t answer right away. He picks up the envelope again, places it directly in your hands this time. “Real or not, it’s gone now. She made sure of it. She destroyed the Darkhold in every universe. Besides, other realities should not affect our choices in this one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wanda’s not the only one who wanted to believe another world could offer happiness. While I was searching for a way to stop her, I met another Christine.”
It’s rare for him to open up this much, but maybe it makes sense—two people saying goodbye often find the courage to be vulnerable. Like you, he lives a solitary life. He always has, even back when Christine Palmer was still by his side.
“She was… both Christine and not Christine. Familiar, but different. And I realized something. I will love Christine in every universe—but not as much as I love the Christine of mine.”
You feel the bittersweet edge of his realization, as though he’s only just come to terms with it.
“I think Wanda saw the same truth,” Stephen continues. “When she looked into those worlds where you existed, she must have realized she could never love any of them the way she loved you here. That’s why she let you go. Why she freed you from her. She gave you what she thought was your happy ending.”
You turn away before he can finish, just as a tear slips free and trails down your cheek. You ache for Stephen’s loss—Christine, alive but married to someone else, as Wong had told you days ago.
Stephen rises slowly, as if the weight of his own words has drained him. He smooths his suit jacket, already turning toward the door when your voice stops him.
“She’s wrong.”
He pauses, glancing back. “Who?”
“Wanda.” You swallow hard, trying to ease the knot in your throat. “She was wrong about me and Kia. Because I choose her. Here, in this one. She’s gone, and I still choose her.”
—
You eventually attend your trial and when it’s over, you walk out into the daylight with Wanda’s memory still burning in you like a compass. You do things differently now. Older, wiser, you no longer mistake survival for living. You live. You carry Wanda with you into every choice, but not as a chain—rather as a reminder of what it means to love fiercely, to find beauty even in a world that never stops breaking. You travel farther than you ever thought possible, across oceans and continents, offering your hands to rebuild villages torn apart by storms, your skills to missions that aim to make life less cruel for the most vulnerable. You work without borders, your service a kind of penance, but also a kind of freedom.
And yet, no matter how many lives you touch, you never forget that your own belongs to you too. When the years pile on and the urgency of helping the world softens, you let yourself slow down. You return east of North America, to a town that’s unfamiliar but feels like home. The days stretch longer there, unhurried, and you fill them with stacks of books you’ve promised yourself for years you would finally read. Soon, your little house begins to sag under the weight of them.
When there’s no more space to walk without brushing against spines and pages, you decide it’s time. You open a small bookstore. The shelves fill quickly, but now there’s room for them, and for you. It becomes part of the town, just as the town becomes a part of you. Life is steady, and enough.
A year and a half goes by this way. Then one evening, just as you’re putting a book back on the shelf, the bell above the door rings.
A woman walks in.
This time, it wasn’t heroes or stones that brought her back.
It was the waiting. Just years passing.
Wait what? Why did I finish reading it so soon??
