The Variant [Part One] [Wanda Maximoff [FF] | Elizabeth Olsen

Chapter 7

The sky is blazing with a threatening luminous red colour. The dark trees around are leafless with their bald stems and branches resembling swarthy skeletal fingers clawing upwards from the ground, like corpses trying to come out of their graves. The ground is filled with brown dead leaves. Wanda recognizes the place to be the hex-illusion she once created during her confrontation with Stephen Strange.

Clap, clap, clap... 

Wanda looks in front of her to see a duplicate of herself calmly walking toward her. The double retains her light-auburn hair but the difference between Wanda and this woman are their clothes. Wanda wears the casuals she donned at the universe she's currently staying, while the copy wears the Scarlet Witch dress complete with the begrimed wimple-crown to her head.

"Bravo, bravo…" The copy said.

"Our misfit Avenger has arrived," Said the copy (Scarlet Witch). Wanda's face stiffened into a sullen expression.

"What are you doing here?" Wanda said gravely.

"What am I doing? I'm still inside your head!" The copy said. Her face inches closer to that of Wanda's.

"Trying to play mommy to another baby," Said the copy (Scarlet Witch) in a mocking sing-songy manner.

"First Billy and Tommy, and now that little girl who couldn't put her ass still," The copy said.

"What are you talking about?" Wanda said, confused.

The copy (Scarlet Witch) stops walking around and looks at her.

"Have you ever wondered why she's always early? Why does she have those terrible eye bags under her eyes?" She's an astral hopper! Maximoff! A fucking mess who could not control the extent of her abilities just like you!" The copy said.

"Trying to become a good surrogate mother when you know you're ungiving. Locking up an entire town hostage is not a good example of being a parent, Wanda. And possessing a variant of yourself doesn't count as one..." — The copy said.

Wanda watches in horror as the copy (Scarlet Witch) starts ripping the flesh of her face with her razor-sharp fingers to reveal layers and pieces of brownish-greenish oozing decaying flesh. Once the monstrous scene has subsided. The copy reveals its true form: A pitch-black demon whose skin is etched with symbols Wanda recognizes to be that of the Darkhold's hardbound cover.

"You could never run, Wanda Maximoff. You are the destroyer... You are THE Scarlet Witch," The demon said in a deep vile voice.

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Wanda bolts up from the bed and looks at her surroundings: she's still inside her isolated cabin's bedroom. Despite the naturally cold weather of the universe, the redhead could feel the dried-up sweat on her body.

The woman noticed that the other side of the bed where Milla lay last night was vacant. She looks at the clock hanging on the wall: it's already four in the afternoon.

She must have been so tired yesterday and besides it's been a long time since she slept on something comfortable as a soft warm bed with fluffy pillows, toasted up by the trickling heat from the fireplace, surrounded by clean and green nature instead of war tents all over the place or some hard brimstone floor from the castle in Wundagore mountain, and the soothing tapping sound of snowy drizzle from the sky.

Wanda stood up and went to the living room to find the child sitting on the couch reading some magazine.

"Hey, Milla," Wanda said. The brown-haired girl looked at her view.