The Ghost of You (One Shot)
Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Female Reader.
Warnings: Mentions of drugging, grief, overall very emotional and dark theme.
Summary: Instead of destroying the darkhold, Wanda is captured by S.H.I.E.L.D and taken to the Raft prison where she undergoes a series of mental and physical torture. Under the influence of sedatives, she starts developing hallucinations that become so blurred in reality that she can no longer tell what’s real and what’s fake. So when you, her girlfriend who is presumed dead, appears inside her cell, causes Wanda to have a difficult time deciphering whether you are really there. Are you real or just another figment of her lonely imagination?
A/N: I can’t believe it took me just about a year to finally finish a piece of work! But here we are! I hope you like it, I hope it’s good & I hope you like them to pull at your heart strings hehe. And if you’d like some songs to go along with this just like I did with my fic, listen to the two songs that inspired this one shot: “Hallucinate” by The Devil Wears Prada and “Fever Dream” by Hurtwave! xx
The darkhold had infected Wanda’s body like an incurable virus. It flowed through her veins so cunningly, so quietly. As if it were sentient. It lurked in the corners of her bones, waiting for her to become too exhausted to fight it off. Until it enveloped her completely, until she wanted it … until she wanted it to kill her.
So in the throes of her infection, Wanda reigned terror across anyone & anything that dared to get in her way. Her endless pits of depression remolded into tall mountains of rage. Her eyes were glazed over with evil’s cloak, her mind infected with it’s seductive spell and her veins intoxicated with the addictive elixir only wickedness could sell.
Eventually, there was no more Wanda. Only the vengeful Scarlet Witch.
If she couldn’t be happy, nobody could. And as her malevolence grew, so did her body count. She snapped superheroes in half like they were pencils, manipulated minds and distorted reality in any way that would satisfy and took innocent lives in the process.
It went on and on, until a moment of humanity breached through Wanda’s sick and poisoned mind. A moment where she finally got a glimpse of what she’d done, of the ones she’s lost and what they’d think of her now. Her vulnerable state was only a flash but it was long enough for S.H.E.I.L.D to finally reach her, after struggling for some time now, and take her into captivity.
The last thing she remembered was a pinch in her neck & the world going dark.
The silence rang through Wanda’s ears in the similar way it did when the bomb went off that peaceful night in Sokovia.
The incessant, mind numbing high pitched hum of loneliness’s lullaby was the only sound she had heard since the last time one of the guards opened the door, dropped a tray of food and left. Even so, that eerie ringing was better than the voices in her head.
It had been quiet for so long. So long that she had no recollection of how much time had gone by since she was first placed here. All she knew was that she was in this dark cement room at the Raft prison and the only reason she even knew where she was was because she had been here before. Same song and dance of being kept under surveillance, sedated and trapped. When she first got here she noticed how cold it was, but now, she couldn’t feel anything anymore.
In the time that she had been here, the daily shots they administered to render her powers useless were taking their toll. Fighting through it got harder with each injection. They even went as far as to place a shock collar around her neck, just like they did before, like she was some kind of animal … a beast. After all, the darkhold was, for all intents and purposes, a beast. It made her forget her good side, it made her a shell of who she used to be and it was determined to do everything to remain in control. It didn’t matter anymore how much she missed her old self, vengeance tasted too good and Wanda was unwilling to part with the one thing left that made her feel alive. Revenge.
So for god only knows how long, Wanda’s mind, body & soul were laced with a conflicting cocktail of tranquilizing liquids and stimulating magic. No amount of sedation could numb the ache yet it was efficient enough to keep her powers at bay.
It drove her mad. Writhing in pain as her mind switched back and forth between good and evil. Twitching like a television losing it’s signal. Every jerk, every scream, every violent urge… it was destroying her.
As the drugs penetrate into Wanda’s brain, slowly deteriorating whatever control she had left, she developed hallucinations. Her once physical battle now manifests mentally & it was getting harder & harder for her tell what was real & what was fake.
In these hallucinations, sometimes all of her horrors would mutate & create one terrifying scene that she couldn’t escape from. They preyed on her over & over again. Those moments were unbearable to the point she swore they would kill her. The pain, the guilt, the hopelessness, it was causing physiological symptoms.
She was in the depths of agony.
But other times, things weren’t always so bad. Some of the hallucinations brought her brief moments of peace and it was those moments that she believed kept her alive.
Precious moments would grace themselves into her lonely world. Visions of laughter, warmth and love. All the things she had forgotten.
She’d see home outside the one tiny window just below the ceiling. Gathering the strength to get up and look, she’d see her Sokovia in springtime. All the beauty it had to offer, including a young Wanda & Pietro running in the swaying meadows. She’d watch as the sun would kiss their skin so delicately that it felt like a comforting hug. The hallucinations were so real she could feel the warmth, smell the wildflowers and hear the sweet, tenor voice of her brother again.
Other days the barren room she withered away in would transform into her bedroom at the Avengers tower where she’d be laying contently on her bed. In the glow of a sunset afternoon, she’d turn her head and there you’d be, right next to her laughing along as you shared a memory. In these visions Wanda could never recall what the stories were about but it didn’t matter. Your mere presence was enough to pump the blood through her veins again. She just wished it could do the same for you. To bring you back to her so she didn’t have to watch you dissolve in the mist, slipping through her hands in the sunrise.
Wanda missed you so much.
You had died a year ago, caught in the crossfire of a senseless battle just like her brother. Except she was away on a mission, not there to protect you like she always promised. She didn’t get to say goodbye. And with the world only getting worse despite these battles for justice, you had died for nothing. Your death was her final straw and subsequently what lead her to the place she is now.
Wanda couldn’t let go of you. All the unfinished business and the moments you never got to have ate her alive. She needed you. Even when her mind was clear, she’d close her eyes & see you there. You always saw the good in her. You saw past her troubled mind to see the heart that ached to feel anything other than pain. Inside this powerful being was a little girl screaming for relief. A little girl who lost everything, and lost herself along the way. Even when she didn’t deserve it, you always stood by her. And now here she was, imprisoned for her unforgivable crimes. The same kind that took you from her.
You were the only thing that made me good, Wanda thought as she looked down to her blackened finger tips.
Completely overcome with grief, Wanda crumbled in misery, crying herself into exhaustion. With her head dropped down in front of her, her drowsy eyes began to flutter closed. Succumbing to the desire for rest, Wanda let her mind fly away.
“Wanda?” She heard your voice quiver from the corner of the room. “What happened to you?”
Wanda jolted at the sound & her eyes immediately searched for the angelic sound of your voice.
There you were, right here in front of her.
Wanda had enough hallucinations to make her lose count, and she had admittedly used her powers to mold you out of the mist before, but this was different. None of them were as real and as tangible as you are right now.
“Y/n?” Wanda’s voice cracked in awe. Her tear stained eyes traced over you feverishly, as if you’d disappear any second, just like you always did at the end of all her previous dreams.
You rushed over to Wanda’s weakened body with that familiar urge to protect her. Crouching down in front of her so you were at eye level, your eyes finally met after what felt like a million years.
Wanda immediately lifted her shaking hands to your face. Cupping it gently, as not to turn you back to dust. She brushed her thumbs across your cheek before running her fingers through your hair, pushing both sides behind your ears and stopping to cradle the back of your head. Her touch was as loving as it was inquisitive. She was in disbelief. In all her other hallucinations she could never feel you as solid matter the way she could now. She needed to feel your skin, to feel your bones, to ensure that you were in fact really here.
“You’re real” she whispered, bewildered. “How are you here? How did you get in here?” Wanda couldn’t understand. You were dead.
As Wanda’s infected mind wandered trying to solve this mystery, it dawned on her … she wasn’t there when you supposedly died. She didn’t see it happen. What if Hydra had taken you the way they’d taken others? What if you were alive the whole time? A glimmer of hope had pumped it’s way through her veins, reviving her.
“Don’t worry about that now. Wanda, tell me what happened? What are you doing here?” You dodged her question, it was irrelevant in comparison to the Wanda you saw in front of you.
“I-”, feeling overwhelmed by reality of what she’d done once again, Wanda let out a sob, “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was weak & raspy from the lack of use.
“For what baby?” You pleaded. Your eyes scanned over her trying to make sense of it all.
Wanda looked thin, you thought, almost concave. Her skin was pale and her eyes were sunken and almost completely void of life. You noticed the collar and the track marks from needles on her skin and as you came to the realization, your body became weak.
“What are they doing to you?” you asked softly.
There was a pause while Wanda’s mind scrambled to take in this moment, while also debating whether to explain what she had done. Eventually, she did just that. She traced back every ugly act, desperate to try and release herself of the pain. You just sat there and listened.
“I didn’t mean to” Wanda begged. Her voice was tightening with emotion. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far.” You watched as the water flowed from her eyes like waterfalls. Her eyes were drawn to the floor in shame, causing you to fall apart with her.
Instinctually, you leaned forward onto your knees and whisked her into your arms, placing one hand around her body and the other to the back of her head, leading it into the crook of your neck.
“I know” you whispered to her comfortingly.
You’d be lying if you said you weren’t astounded—disturbed even, by what Wanda shared with you. It was chilling and scary and completely uncharacteristic of the Wanda you fell in love with. Sure, Wanda had a dark side and she wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t evil. She was just a little girl who lost her way. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what Wanda did, the longer you sat here watching her dissolve into nothing, made you unable to see her as anything other than the woman you knew … incapable of seeing her as anything but your Wanda. You knew her, because she was a part of you. In this life and in every life. The two of you were connected so firmly that it was as if you were feeling every inch of her sorrow with her.
As Wanda’s tears subsided and her body regained stability, you separated yourself from her in order to look at her once again.
Wanda held on to your hands tightly, unwilling to let them leave her again. “I’m not a monster y/n.” she kept saying these things as if you ever thought differently.
“I know” you reassured her, brushing your hand lovingly against her cheek.
There was a slight pause before you spoke again, an idea coming to mind. “Come here.”
Lifting to your feet, you tugged Wanda’s hands upwards, signaling for her to follow your action. Wanda stood up, her eyes looking into yours and flickering back and forth with curiosity.
In another short pause, you stayed there looking into her eyes. You looked beyond their surface and noticed the way they flashed subtly between a Wanda green and a Scarlet red. It was as if two souls lived inside her and each one was fighting for dominance.
She was in complete inner turmoil. Powerless to the torture of her mind.
You couldn’t stand to see her like this, killing herself slowly.
“Show me “Wanda”” you finally spoke. If she was ever going to heal from this, she needed to find herself again.
And like a moth to a flame, Wanda did exactly as you asked. With alluring swirls of red, she brought life into this desolate room. Instead of waking nightmares, she formed wonders of beauty. A speckling of stars graced the ceiling and the ground turned from solid plaster to a soft bed of grass. A blanket appeared beneath both of your feet and in one swift movement, Wanda took your hand and laid you down beside her. In that moment, it was Wanda and you as you were before it all went bad. Before you disappeared from her world.
The sceneries continued to change. From a peaceful beachfront sunrise to a cozy autumn date. Where you talked and talked, never seeming to run out of things to share. From both of you cuddled in a chair at a Christmas party, watching the blizzard blow outside the window, to a night-in cooking dinner together. You laughed and laughed, until your stomach’s burned with such joyful pain.
Wanda was making up for lost time. Recreating all the things you had done and creating all the things that should’ve been. Wanda showed you her light, her humor, her chivalry, her heart. All the good she had lost. You wanted her to see that she still had her humanity. You wanted her to see that she didn’t die with the darkhold.
Then, Wanda took you to this abandoned ballroom in Sokovia. Back before the war, when her home still breathed with life.
Hand-in-hand, you both looked up and around at the elegance of Elizabethan Baroque architecture. Although run down and forgotten, it still beamed with a beauty you were in awe of. The interior was palace-like. White marble walls adorned with dainty patterns and detailed carvings. All housed within a ceiling so high it felt like a cathedral. Massive windows had been broken, leaving the room feeling like it was half enclosed, half outdoors. And as you walked through, your footsteps crunched over scattered rubble which echoed loudly with every step.
“I used to sneak away and come here when I was a kid.” Wanda told you as she watched the memories play out in front of her.
“Little mischievous Wanda” you laughed, poking fun at her rebellious ways starting so young. She chuckled back, unable to deny it.
“Why’d you come here?” You added, genuinely curious to know more about her younger self.
“I don’t know. I stumbled upon it one day. Even though it’s massive, it was tucked away in an area I rarely ventured out to. I snuck through the window one day and just kept coming back. It was my hideout.” There was a break in her answer as she continued to look around. “I liked the grandeur of it all. The silence. The way people and their moments used to exist here and now it’s just a symbol for the passage of time.” You knew exactly what she meant.
Wanda guided you to the center of the ballroom floor and wrapped her arms around your neck before the flick of her finger caused a gentle sway of notes to reverberate off these forsaken walls.
Rocking your body slowly, her eyes lingered on yours. In the same way you did with her, Wanda noticed something missing in your eyes. Existence. Like they were becoming see through. And with it, her rose colored veil begins to fall and a piece of her heart crumbling with it once again.
This may not have been completely a hallucination, but it wasn’t completely real either. The drugs had caused illusions similar to dreams but this… this was her own magical doing. She wasn’t sure how she did it but she figured her chaotic mind had made for chaos magic. That her desperation reached it’s peak and stretched her powers to a place they’d never gone before.
She continued, swallowing the lump that was beginning to form. “But I think now I see, it was the way that beauty still existed in it’s sorrow that made me love this place.” You wrapped your arms around her waist and rested your head against her chest, hugging her tightly, knowing this was bigger than the temple you danced in.
You felt her body deflate in your arms as she came to terms with something you didn’t know.
“And how the dead still live in the air that we breathe.” her voice tightened. “they live on in the memories, in the energy of the places they once stood.”
“That they’re never really gone.” you finished for her. In that moment you started to feel funny. Your body felt phantom but your mind was still sharp and that’s when you too had realized that your job here was done. That this wasn’t “real” but instead, a temporary moment existing again. The pieces started fall into place. How you couldn’t remember why or how you were here. It’s because Wanda formed you from her agony, bringing you back to life, just for a moment.
Gradually, the setting you were in begins to disintegrate in thin air and you were back in Wanda’s lonesome cell.
Keeping your position, you both swayed slowly in a painful silence. Both aware of what comes next, but both unwilling to accept it quite yet.
“Is it peaceful in the afterlife?” Wanda asked, almost too quietly to hear, finally speaking her realization out loud. She yearned for some sort of solace.
“Not as peaceful without you.” You paused, trying to console yourself. “But it’s not your time baby.” But just like that, the tears were back and it felt hard to breathe. “You have to let it go. You have to let me go.”
Like a child latching on to their mother, Wanda manages to speak through her choked up state, “Let me go with you.” She knew you were right, that she had to let go of the guilt and at least try to fill endless chasm that came with losing you. She knew you were right about needing to let go of the darkhold so she could live again. But she would still rather be with you.
“I love you Wanda.” is all you could muster. You whispered it into her ear and then kissed her with an ache you can’t describe. It felt like floating, it felt like dying all over again, yet it felt like a first breath.
Wanda knew it was impossible. That no matter how powerful she was, she couldn’t be with you now. She knew that as always, you knew exactly what to do, exactly what to say. Even in the afterlife, you could save her.
She knew that she had to destroy the darkhold. No amount of black magic could make her right inside but there was a world of good that she could do with her gift. This world needed her good. You had always told her that.
“I’m here whenever you need me.” You said, taking one last look into her eyes and placing your hand above her heart to indicate where you’ll be in the meantime.
Placing a chaste kiss to her cheek, you whispered, “I’ll see you again, love.” before fading back into the place between.
Tag list: @xxxtwilightaxelxxx , @wandavisionmoot , @alexia-rmks, @impossibleliv1031
