this side of paradise

swirling domino timeline of doom

Earth-616: New York City

Day Eight

x

Wanda didn't know exactly where to start.

She looked to James and Yelena. It hit her then how eerie it was, to be around the two of them.

In her universe, Wanda was a bridesmaid in Yelena's wedding.

She watched her and Bucky exchange vows at Camp Lehigh, along with the rest of the Avengers. She was there when they bought their first home, and she crashed on their couch for two months after her and Vision split up. And after Yelena died, Wanda gave the eulogy at her funeral.

She took a deep breath. Yelena's death. That was the most logical place for her to start—she could work backwards from there.

"In my universe, Stephen Strange was Sorcerer Supreme. I'd been working under him for a few years as a Master of the Mystic Arts, when we were attacked by variants from another universe."

She paused for a moment, letting her words settle. Bucky and Yelena didn't so much as flinch, so she continued.

"We were at an event, all of us Avengers, honoring the Black Widow and Captain America—the two of you, in my universe—for their humanitarian efforts after the Blip. It's my understanding that your universe went through something similar, with Thanos."

James nodded. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Right." Wanda cleared her throat, shifting uncomfortably. She debated whether or not to tell them then and there who the variants in question were, and decided to put a pin in it for later.

"In any case—the attack, the variants in question, they accomplished half of their mission. They killed my universe's version of you two, in front of a crowd of bystanders, along with Dr. Strange and other members of the Avengers. I would later come to find out that the attack was a means to an end—they only accomplished half of their mission."

Yelena moved to the edge of her seat. Whatever doubts she'd had about Wanda, she filed out of mind—the look on this Wanda Maximoff's face told her everything. She had to be telling the truth.

Wanda took a deep breath. "They were after something. Something that, unfortunately for them, didn't exist—at least not in my universe."

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'not in your universe?'"

Wanda knew that if they were going to believe her entirely, she had to show them proof of what she was about to say next—so she pulled the pager out of her pocket, and unmasked it, revealing its true nature.

It wasn't just an agent of chaos magic. She'd cloaked it to look like a pager in the real world. In reality, it was a granite slab, with runes carved in them.

Yelena didn't recognize the language, but Bucky did.

"I've seen those runes before," Bucky muttered, looking closely at the transfigured pager. They were the same runes that marked the ground beneath Thor's feet, every time he came from Asgard to Earth—and every time he left, he would summon the Bifrost, and leave those runes imprinted in the ground behind him.

Bucky looked up from the stone, and right back to Wanda. "That's Asgardian, isn't it?"

She nodded, re-transfigured the stone so it turned back into a pager, and then placed it back in her pocket. "As I would later find out—my universe wouldn't be the last one these variants would jump into. About a second after they left, once they realized they had the wrong branched reality, I was visited by someone else—" she pointed to the pager Bucky held in his hand, "—the same person who gave me these runestones."