Someone To Stay | Wanda Maximoff

16. When I Was Ten

WANDA's POV

"Luna..."

We stay frozen, staring at each other.

The second her brain becomes aware that she's not alone, she drops the kitchen knife that was previously in her hand onto her blanket and quickly scrambles to pull her sleeves down.

"No, I already saw," I tell her, a mixture of concern and panic and confusion flooding my brain. Why didn't she tell me she was feeling like this? I gave her all day as an opportunity.

I should've known. My poor baby has been struggling so much that she's resorted to self harm. It makes me think; if I had done something differently, if I had pushed her just that little bit harder to tell me what was wrong, would this have happened?

After controlling some tears that were threatening to escape my eyes, I begin walking closer to Luna and I stop just in front of her bed to see the blood practically pouring from her arm.

Acting quickly, I grab a towel that's conveniently on the floor and press it to her arm. Luckily, it's just the one so I don't need to worry about trying to stem the bleeding on both.

Luna simply continues to breathe heavily, but it's not fast so I'm not super worried. I can tell she's looking up at me for some kind of reassurance. I'm just not sure what to say to her to make it better. So, I use my magic to move the knife away and somewhere out of her reach. That's all I know how to do for now.

"Mama, please say something," she whimpers, staring up at me with her beautiful, beautiful eyes.

I can't speak to her. Not because of what she's done, but because I don't trust my words. I don't want to screw up and say the wrong thing.

"Mommy, please." She starts tugging at my sleeve to get my attention, I'm just staring at the wall to the right of me. "I'm in pain, mama!"

There's no way I can ignore her when she's begging for my care. Especially since she's never called me 'mommy' before, only 'mama'.

As a substitute to talking, I scoop her up from her bed and take a seat where she was, then bring her onto my lap to rest against my chest. All the while I keep pressure on the towel pressed to her arm. It's not a load of little cuts, it's one long one. Going straight from the crook of her elbow to near the veins of her wrist. Fortunately, she didn't get that far before I walked in.

It's not superficial, either. It's not necessarily stitches deep, but I'd like to place a few steri strips to help close it. The knife she chose was fairly blunt, blunter than some of the other ones we own, anyway.

"I'm tired, mama," she tells me, the exhaustion evident in her voice. "Everything hurts."

"I know, baby," I reply in a whisper and kiss the top of her head. "Let me clean you up first, then you can go to sleep. I'll stay with you."

LUNA's POV

I don't have a clue how this happened. One moment I was in bed, staring at my wall and the next, I was sneaking up a knife with my magic when no one was looking. Now I'm left alone in my room again, the knife having been removed from me and mama's gone into the bathroom to fetch some things to help my arm.

Hopefully I haven't upset her too deeply, I didn't mean to. Something just came over me and I was no longer in control of my actions.

My mom smiles sadly at me when she re-enters my room, this time holding a bandage roll, some sort of closure strips, and the antiseptic cream she used for my knuckles yesterday.

If you didn't know the circumstances, you would look at me and think I'd been in a fight. Both my hands are bandaged up and bruised and shortly my arm will be, too.