i asked this when i originally posted these fics to ao3, but what accent do we think that anya has?
Natasha arrives back home that night to another one of Wanda and Anya's messes.
"What're you two doing?" she asks, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it up over one of the dining room chairs, "Is this all of the wedding stuff?"
"Not all of it," Wanda stands, walking around the couch and pulling Natasha into a hug, "You have all of the flower and place card stuff, though."
"So what's this?" Natasha asks, holding the arm that slinks around her waist, glancing at the plethora of things on the table. There are now photos of dresses and suits and venue options and cakes and it doesn't end.
"Everything else," Wanda guides her over to the couch. Anya's sat in the corner of the couch, legs crossed and a laptop in her lap and there's some kind of mysterious look on her face that she can't even begin to decipher because Wanda's already showing her dresses. "I wasn't sure if you'd want to wear a suit or a dress."
"I haven't decided yet," Natasha says, shrugging, "What're you doing?"
"It's a surprise, Nat," Wanda smiles softly, "have you come to a conclusion about any of the flowers?"
"Lena liked the leptos for centerpieces," Natasha points out, "they're pink and white, so I think they'd look good."
"Okay," Wanda writes that down, and they go over a couple of other things - some more flowers, the font that Natasha liked for the place cards with an agreement to do gold lettering on them, and a promise to schedule a cake-testing day at some point in the coming weeks.
Wanda ends up going into the kitchen for a snack a little while into their endless picking out of wedding details that Natasha's sure she's never noticed in other people's weddings.
Anya gets her attention after Wanda's out of earshot, "I found something."
"What'd you find?" Natasha relaxes against the back of the couch, watching as Anya flips the laptop she's had on her lap around.
On the screen is a picture of a cat, a little black cat that's flopped over on its back and practically smiling at the camera, "His name is Smoke."
"You can't name a cat Smoke," Natasha crinkles her nose, "That's so stereotypical."
"Can we adopt him?" Anya asks, pushing it into her lap this time, "He's so cute! And he needs a home which we have! It's great!"
Natasha sighs. She's wanted a cat for a long time, yes, but there's so much going on right now. And if Yelena ends up in the hospital and she and Kate need a dog sitter, how will the dogs react to a cat? Or better yet, how will the cat react to the dogs? Too many variables.
"Devochka, I don't know if we can get a kitten right now," Natasha says apologetically, "Imagine if we had one right now - he'd be knocking everything off the table and making Mom mad."
"When are you two going to have this wedding, anyway? Every time I see one on TV, they take like a year to actually get it done," Anya whines, flipping the laptop back to herself and scrolling through something.
"Do you have plans that we might mess up?" Natasha retorts as Wanda comes back over, bowl of cut-up strawberries in hand, "She wants a cat."
"We can't get a cat right now," Wanda replies as Natasha grabs a strawberry piece for herself.
"What'd I tell you?"
"You two suck," Anya retorts, running a hand over her still-short hair, "Can I dye my hair?"
"Depends, are you okay with bleaching it?" Natasha asks, nodding at the dark hair on her daughter's head, "It'd be a process."
"Yeah, why not?" Anya shrugs, "Pride month's coming up, maybe I'll go rainbow."
Natasha hums, "I could see it."
"As long as you're safe about it," Wanda adds, "what do you want to wear for the wedding?"
Anya shrugs, "To be honest, I only thought about dyeing my hair three minutes ago, so you're going to have to give me more time for that one."
Natasha snorts, contentment pooling in her stomach as she sits with her two favorite people, and the idea of a cat laying around the apartment just completes the picture.
Smoke. (What a stupid name.)
-
Wanda didn't sleep much last night.
She couldn't help it - after she and Natasha retreated to their room, they ended up talking about Yelena and it just felt like it was burning a hole in her chest. She can't even begin to fathom what that feels like for Natasha.
As morbid as it is, she's been lucky that none of the deaths of her family were prolonged. Her parents went quickly, Pietro went even faster, and Natasha somehow faster than all of them. She wonders sometimes if Pietro's mad that he didn't win that competition.
She'd give too much to see him again, even though she's fully content in her family now. She loves Anya and Natasha too much to even think about it.
Yet, here she is on a Saturday morning, standing in front of the Sanctum Santorum on 177A Bleecker Street, about to ask something she's 90% sure that she has the answer to already.
She'd go to Agatha, but she's pretty sure that her solutions would involve chaos and craziness that she's not prepared to deal with nor willing to. So Dr. Strange is her solution, albeit not her favorite. She just needs to talk.
Slowly, Wanda steps forward, knocking on the large door, which falls open in classic movie-like creepiness.
She doesn't hear anything concerning, so she moves forward, entering the Sanctum and using her powers to ease the door shut behind herself.
She walks in a little further, only to be faced with a large staircase.
Cautiously, she calls out, "Hello?"
A portal appears at the top of the stairs and Dr. Strange steps out of it, looking both exhausted and irritated and Wanda can't help but feel like this is a terrible idea.
"Wanda," his voice is devoid of any real emotions, and it makes her skin crawl. She's never really liked him.
"Strange," she responds, keeping her voice at the same tone as his. She almost wants to crawl into his mind, see if there's any bits of anything in there, but she holds back, not wanting to get on his bad side. It's not worth it.
"Can I help you with something?" he asks, walking down the stairs and allowing her to fully take in his appearance. He has his cape over a t-shirt with some logo on it and a pair of jeans that look relatively new with some worn sneakers.
"I'd like to ask your opinion," she words carefully, "if that's okay."
"Well, I have nothing better to do," he responds with a humorless chuckle, "would you like anything to drink? Tea? Water? Soda?"
"No, thank you," she responds politely, letting herself be led over to some chairs around a fireplace. She sits down across from him, toying with her hands, "If you could get rid of things, would you?"
"What kind of things?" Stephen asks, "People? Rocks? Memories?"
"Cancer," Wanda says softly, feeling stupid immediately after the words leave her lips. Dr. Strange stiffens and she clarifies, "My fiancé's sister... she has stage two bone cancer in her knee. Her chemo isn't working and her options are to do more chemo or to cut off her leg or experimental medicine. And... I don't know the full extent of my powers, but I do remember reading a book with a really bad ending a couple of years ago and getting angry and then it was gone."
"It's not entirely ethical, if that's what you're asking," he raises an eyebrow, "and medically speaking, if the tumor is big enough, you would be doing more damage than good."
"What if I rewrote it?" Wanda blurts out, knowing she's grasping at straws now, "I mean, you know what I did in Westview. Monica Rambeau is enhanced because of me."
"I wouldn't call that a prime example of good," Stephen retorts, folding his hands in his lap, "those people were tortured."
A pang of guilt shoots through Wanda's entire body and she grits her teeth, trying to keep her irritations under control. She's been doing too well to go out of control now.
"I'm not talking about an entire city," Wanda digs her nails into her palm, "I'm talking about her knee. If I rewrote that reality - basically a replacement."
"I don't think you know how your magic works well enough for that to be advisable," he says, "but we also work with two entirely different kinds of magic. Why not consult someone more educated?"
"It's not something worth doing," Wanda replies carefully, "the only other person that practices the magic I have is corrupted by the Darkhold."
"And you're not?"
Wanda shakes her head, "I never touched it. It's locked away, safe."
"I had a nightmare that you did," Stephen says, a distant look on his face, "You shouldn't. It's not going to fall into the wrong hands, is it?"
Wanda doesn't know how to respond to that. She locked it in a magic barrier in the basement of Agatha's home (not to her knowledge, of course, but to be fair, Agatha doesn't even know her name's Agatha anymore). She's 99% sure it's safe.
"...It's safe."
"You hesitated."
"It's safe!" Wanda insists, stomach twisting as she mutters to herself again, "It's safe."
"Uh huh," Stephen looks skeptical, "And your fiancé, how safe was it when you pulled her from the dimension she was sent to? And your sons, the poking around you've done recently isn't subtle."
Wanda flexes her fingers and tightens her jaw. This man is not going to get a rise out of her, "I think this conversation is over."
"Your record isn't clean, Wanda," Stephen adds, "This isn't something you should do."
"And I'm not going to," Wanda clarifies, "but please, tell me, why can you break the rules and still be the hero at the end of the day? Why is me breaking them so bad? I didn't even realize what I was doing was wrong and when I did I stopped, unlike you. Don't act like you're so clean, Stephen."
With that, she leaves, fully over everything and pissed that she even asked. This is just going to have to play out regularly, even if she could do something to stop it.
It's better for everyone, even though she held a crying Natasha in her arms last night and felt her heart break into pieces.
It's better.
She knows that - she just needs to believe it now.
She finds herself walking around the city instead of making her usual beeline home, humming to herself and trying to come up with something.
Yelena doesn't deserve this. Natasha doesn't deserve to watch another one of her people suffer. It's been two long months already and Wanda doesn't think she can comprehend the pain that the others are in.
She ends up walking into a CVS and mulling up and down the aisles, grabbing two boxes of bleach when she comes across them and a few colors.
She can't fix everything, but she can at least make her daughter happy.
She makes sure to also grab a jar of peanut butter, knowing that they're low and Natasha's going to want more.
To even out the oddness of the things she's buying, she also grabs some chocolates for herself and an adult coloring book that's laid on a shelf that it's definitely not supposed to be on.
She ends up stopping again on the way home, getting Chinese for lunch.
It's one of Anya and Natasha's favorites, even though they can never agree on the place to get it from - Anya insists that the sesame chicken is good anywhere and they have to order from a specific place for the good crab rangoons while Natasha thinks the total opposite.
At the end of the day, Wanda's just happy that they haven't killed each other yet. She doesn't think that she can handle that. She got lucky, she should just be okay with that.
She for once ignores the longing for her boys, ignores the fact that Dr. Strange is just another arrogant asshole that she doesn't need to know, ignores the terrible and welcomes the good. She has a daughter. She has a fiancé. She has a family. She's going home to them right now.
Okay, well, it's not easy to revel in all of her good when her phone is buzzing in her pocket. Can they wait just, like, thirty seconds?
When it doesn't stop buzzing, she picks up, confused that Natasha's calling her. They were just texting ten minutes ago that she'd be home soon with food.
"Hey, Nat," she leans against the wall of the restaurant, keeping a careful eye for when they have the food ready.
"Um," Natasha sounds a little frantic, "Kate said to not worry, but... apparently Yelena fainted like ten minutes ago. They're... they're going to the ER to get her checked out and I could've waited until you got home but..." Natasha's voice wavers, "I'm not okay."
"Okay, okay," Wanda grabs the now-ready food, "I'm heading home now, okay? I'll be there in like ten minutes, lyubov. I love you."
"Ten minutes, okay," Natasha huffs, "Okay. I love you, too."