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“Trust me, we know how to handle your little witch if she tries to—”
Reed Richards’ words were interrupted by a subtle ripping sound followed swiftly by a resounding CLANG!
Stephen Strange staggered back with a curse at the sight of a perfectly round scarlet disc with emerald green trimming that jutted out of the dais in front of him, the edge of it buried three inches deep in the marble.
“What the hell—?” he muttered, looking up as several of the Illuminati rose from their seated positions.
Hanging ten feet above Stephen was a rip in space that he barely had time to contemplate before a body fell through it.
Or—not ‘fell’. Falling denotes a lack of control that this individual most definitely possessed. Rather, they descended quickly, wreathed in a scarlet light that evaporated the moisture in Stephen’s mouth even as he stared, confounded.
It wasn’t the Scarlet Witch, but...
She landed, clad in black, knee-high boots, scarlet leather pants, a ratty, sleeveless band tee, and a dark green leather vest. She had several visible piercings. A guitar pick dangled from one ear. Her dark hair was a long braided Mohawk ending in a long ponytail.
Wanda Maximoff looked over her shoulder at Stephen Strange. Her eyes scanned him once, and she wrinkled her nose.
“Oof. You’re old,” she said.
She was sixteen. Seventeen, tops.
“And you’re a...toddler,” he replied, somewhat guardedly. She scoffed, smirking, then looked at the Illuminati.
“You are in violation—” Captain Carter started, but Wanda ignored her and looked at Professor Xavier.
“We need to talk,” she told him, eyes glowing with a crimson light. Xavier raised a hand quickly to his temple, but Wanda chuckled.
“No need for that,” she chided with a smirk. “Door’s wide open.”
There was a flash of red, and suddenly the room was gone.
**
Stephen looked up and around at the blankness of the empty landscape in which he found himself. He was there. Wanda was there. But they were alone.
He looked down at his hands, which were unbound, but even as he looked at them, he knew that none of his sorcery would affect this space.
“What’s happening?” Stephen asked, and Wanda grunted.
“They’re being difficult. Typical, really, and I never thought they wouldn’t,” she answered, staring at a distant point of this endless nowhere. “Won’t take a moment. Then we can talk,” she added.
“Talk?” Stephen’s eyebrows vaunted upwards and he shifted his weight. “I’m supposed to believe that you just want to talk?” he asked.
Slowly, she turned her head to look at him. The fiery crimson light that overtook her sclera twisted his stomach.
“I could wipe you from history,” she informed him without blinking. He stared back at her, swallowing hard at the utter disinterest in her gaze. “Instead, I am trying to help you stop my alternate,” she continued after a moment. He blinked. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her spell work. “Be more respectful, Stephen.”
He stood quietly, assessing this strange new variable in the increasingly complicated equation that had consumed the last few days. She stood with a confidence and a power beyond her years, but so had the Wanda he knew from his world. This was different. There was something about her posture that was still in defiance of her youth. It galled him. He wished – not for the first time today – that he had his magic, and could dispel whatever illusion this Wanda was presenting so he could examine her more closely – divine her intentions.
“You are staring, old man,” Wanda told him, and he immediately averted his eyes before feeling a flash of embarrassment that her chastisement had produced such a reaction.
“Just trying to figure out why you’re helping me,” he answered.
“You’ll have answers in a moment,” she said, lifting her chin. Stephen watched as a figure approached at great speed from an even greater distance before suddenly coming to a stop before them, revealing an alarmed and suspicious, but thankfully silent Black Bolt. Shortly after followed Captain Carter, and then Reed Richards, and then Mordo and Captain Marvel, and finally, Professor Xavier, each of them snapping into place like a released rubber band.
Stephen looked around at them all, and then at Wanda, who relaxed.
“There,” she said with a satisfied sigh. “Now, we can talk.”
“Talk? You have just violated the sanctum sanctorum of the Illumin—” Captain Marvel started, breaking off with a dropped jaw when Wanda raised a hand to her mouth to delicately cover an exaggerated yawn. “Did you just yawn at me?” the cosmic powered defender demanded.
“I did not cross time, space, and dimension to cater to your ego. I came to lecture you,” Wanda said, utterly unimpressed.
“Oh, I’ll give you a lecture,” Captain Marvel growled, raising her fist—
—Which did not halo with the power of the cosmos.
She tried again while Stephen watched Wanda critique her perfectly lacquered nails (dark green).
“Is Vision your boyfriend where you come from?” Stephen asked as Captain Marvel continued to try and fail to access her powers. Wanda beamed at him, nodding.
“Also lead guitarist of our band,” she added. His eyes dropped briefly to the band tee and then returned to her young, smiling face.
He felt ancient.
“Of course, he is,” he said.
“What did you do to us!?” demanded Captain Marvel, drawing their attention back to the conversation at hand.
“She didn’t do anything to us,” Mr. Fantastic replied, remarkably calm – given the situation. “I would guess this is some sort of…mental construct. One she controls, which is why you don’t glow, and I don’t stretch,” he explained, looking to Wanda for confirmation and receiving a lightly arched eyebrow in response.
“Quite the astute observation, Reed. If I’m not mistaken, she has also altered our perception of the flow of time. Very little time is actually passing in the real world. None of us has even blinked yet,” Professor Xavier reported, his attention on the young witch in front of them, standing between them and Stephen.
She looked at Black Bolt.
“I also paralyzed your vocal cords in the real world. You can speak here, and you will not even clear your throat out there,” she said. The Inhuman straightened at this, blinking twice. He glanced at his fellow Illuminati for a moment and opened his mouth before hesitating. He closed his mouth, shaking his head. Wanda tilted her head. “You’d rather not take the chance. Respect.”
“Why are we here?” Mordo, Sorcerer Supreme, demanded.
“You’re not taking me seriously,” Wanda told him.
“Oh, I assure you, we take this assault most seriously,” Captain Carter replied darkly, and teen-Wanda rolled her eyes.
“Not me, ‘me’,” she said, gesturing to herself. “Strange’s ‘me’. The Scarlet Witch. The one who wants to destroy reality just to get at kids who belong to another version of her,” she said.
Several of them rolled their eyes, which had Stephen arching both eyebrows.
“She’s not a threat,” Reed Richards asserted, and Wanda snorted.
“According to whom?” she demanded, shifting her weight to one hip and folding one arm so she could perch the other on it and judge him more appropriately. “You? The person trapped inside the mind of a seventeen-year-old, paralyzed and completely at my mercy?” she sneered, looking him over once and clicking her tongue against her teeth.
Reed flinched back at the assessment and tightened his jaw, but said nothing. Wanda shook her head.
“She is far more determined and willing to hurt whoever gets in her way, and this?” Wanda gestured. “This was nothing,” she told him, tilting her head. “She will tear you into tissue paper without breaking a sweat, and if you hurt her? What does it matter? She will knit those bones back together with her mind and keep going. And if you kill her, you render her children without a mother, and you will do this without even harming the person who really is trying to kill you, who will be free to find other methods of trying to come here, now that there is no one to stop her from claiming guardianship of those children,” Wanda told them, watching them take in those words before gritting her teeth. “She will not stop until she has America Chavez’ powers for her own, and she will tear every universe apart to make it so, and you are not. Taking. Her. Seriously.”
Silence met her words.
Stephen looked around at everyone and then took half a step forward.
“I’d like to ask a question.”
“I am listening.”
“How do you even know about all this?”
“My dreams have been troubled since I came into my power, a few years ago. I channeled a few spells, got help from others with abilities that include divination across universes – I even consulted with the Sorcerer Supreme of my world. It was difficult to make out at first. The universe is infinite and chaotic, the multiverse even more tangled. There are a hundred other Scarlet Witches attempting this very thing,” she told him. His eyebrows dipped.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean other Wandas chasing other multiverse travelers,” she answered.
“I...thought America was one of a kind,” he argued. Wanda sighed.
“She is the only America Chavez,” she agreed, before tilting her head. “She is not the only traveler,” she explained. His head went up into an extended nod.
“Right,” he said, absorbing that. “Carry on,” he said, and she huffed, turning back to the Illuminati.
“Why do you care?” Mordo asked.
Wanda’s stare became extremely pointed and flat.
“Why do I care that an alternate version of myself is killing innocent people in the pursuit of happiness she will never find? Why do I care that she is willing to destroy universes in a search she will never resolve or relinquish? This is your question?” she asked him. He subsided under her glare.
Black Bolt moved his hands, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What do you want us to do about it?” Captain Carter translated.
“I want you to let this old man do his job,” Wanda told her.
Every member of the Illuminati (except, notably, Charles Xavier), tensed at these words, hackles rising visibly at the suggestion of releasing Stephen Strange.
“Stephen Strange is not to be trusted!”
“He is reckless, and acts with impunity as though his way is the only way.”
“You don’t know the lives he’s ended, the damage he’s done!”
YOU THINK I DO NOT?
The words entered their brains directly.
YOU THINK I DO NOT KNOW HIS SINS?
A cavalcade of images filled the space, each a visual replay of many different versions of Stephen Strange leveraging the awesome power granted to them to wreak havoc and mayhem, causing devastation that took him aback and set his heart racing sickly in his chest. He watched a dark, gaunt version of himself, wreathed in the same dark crimson as Wanda, disintegrate a crowd of people and felt his stomach lurch.
YOU THINK I DO NOT KNOW EACH OF YOUR SINS?
The visions shifted dramatically, and now each of the Illuminati were faced with their past, as well as the pasts of their alternate selves – forced to watch as Xavier puppeted an army of child soldiers from inside their own minds. As Black Bolt shouted hordes of dissenters and their ramshackle defenses into nothingness, obliterating whole cities with a look of cold indifference.
They watched as Captain Marvel flew through the planet, causing its total destruction before flying away into deep space without so much as a backward glance.
They watched as Captain Carter, face flecked with blood, ruthlessly beat a child to death as their parents looked on in horror and pleaded with her to stop.
They watched Reed Richards smother his entire family.
They watched Mordo perform the same actions for which they condemned Stephen Strange and worse.
I KNOW YOUR SINS.
The images vanished, and all eyes turned to Wanda, who sneered.
YOUR SINS PALE IN COMPARISON TO MY OWN.
More images filled the space – Wanda with the Book of Shadows, walking down a street and transforming random citizens into misshapen demons that fell into step behind her.
Wanda sitting atop a throne of skeletons atop a hill of skulls overlooking a New York skyline twisted and reformed to her liking.
Wanda casually obliterating heroes as they desperately threw themselves into battle against her, their atoms dispersing with a wave of her hand, her expression disinterested and distant – as if she weren’t even really there.
Wanda consorting with Dormammu, and with other beings Strange didn’t recognize, but could still see were incredibly powerful and dangerous.
Wanda using her power to torture others, each of them suspended by a red light, as her unarmed and unarmored friends attempted to talk her down.
Stephen was horrified by the others, but focused in on this particular vision, as it was clear that this was the Wanda who stood before them. Her arms were black up to the elbow, almost appearing to be opera gloves, and on her hip, the Darkhold, clear as day. He looked from the vision to Wanda, who was also staring at it, looking suddenly much older than her seventeen years, and he understood. She had once possessed the Darkhold, had plummeted into darkness, and somehow...returned. Somehow, she had freed herself.
Eventually, the visions faded. The air hung heavy with unease. Captain Carter bent, putting her hands on her knees as she closed her eyes against what she had seen herself do.
Black Bolt turned away with a hand over his mouth.
Richards was pale, and Xavier stared down at his clasped hands, face grim.
Finally, Mordo spoke.
“Those...those weren’t us. That was a trick – an illusion,” he hissed.
“It was not,” Xavier spoke, voice thick with emotion.
“Statistically speaking, this is all out there, happening right now,” Richards corroborated, though he was still deeply disturbed by what he had seen.
“You sit here and pass judgment on worlds you have no right to judge. You have yet to successfully shepherd your own reality in any meaningful way, and yet you claim to be the authority on who has the right to act in the multiverse,” Wanda sneered. “Those were examples from other realities, but I assure you; I have more than ample evidence from this reality that you have no business being the authority on where to store the mop bucket.”
They stared at her.
“You cannot stop The Scarlet Witch,” she told them. “You are ill-equipped; chained down by your massive – and frankly – undeserved egos. I am a child, and you could not stop me. She has had more time than I to develop her power and her rage.”
“We get it,” Captain Marvel snapped, and Wanda sniffed.
“You don’t. You are simply irritated to be talked down to by a child, which is precisely my point,” she countered. “Which would you prefer? A lecture from a child, or death because of your own stupidity?” she challenged.
Silence. Wanda sighed.
“Let them go. Let Stephen Strange do his job. And keep your nose out of other realities’ business’,” Wanda ordered. “You’re barely capable of cleaning up your own messes,” she added, before – with a flourish of her hands and a red flash, the mental landscape was empty aside from her and Stephen.
“...Thanks,” he said.
Wanda turned to face him.
“You’re welcome, old man,” she said, eyes carrying a brief, playful twinkle. He let the appellation slide.
“Not sure it’ll do any good...”
“It’ll do enough.”
Stephen looked at her for a long moment.
“Am I also eighteen where you’re from? Is it like a high school universe, or—”
“Stephen,” Wanda interrupted, and he cut himself off with a chagrined grimace, but her expression was somber. “She is lost. Alone. Afraid. She needs you. Do not be afraid to be there for her,” she advised.
He blinked.
“Wha—”
And with a snap, he was standing back on the dais of the Illuminaudience chamber, with teen Wanda picking up her scarlet and emerald shield and rising into the rip in reality before anyone could do anything about it.
They all watched as the rip sealed itself, and then they all looked around at each other.
“So,” Stephen said, breaking the silence. He lifted his hands, gesturing with his spread palms while alerting them to the fact that he was still shackled. “Now what?”