Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter’s had enough.

He wishes he’d never sought out Doctor Strange for help, especially ever since he discovered he no longer wielded the time stone due to the five years of them both being dead. He doesn’t really blame Doctor Strange for everything that happened, because Peter himself did cause a lot of the trouble that ensued after messing up the spell. But a part of him does blame him for it.

He really hates magic, he decides. It ruined his life. It took MJ and Ned from him. It took May from him. It just swept the rug that had been his life from under his feet. He wishes he still had Mister Stark, too– he’d know what to do. But Mister Stark had died ripping the universe apart and stitching it back together. For him. Happy had said so himself.

His police scanner is fairly quiet today, so he flops down on the bed in his sad, lonely, empty apartment and pulls out his Avengers comic books. He hadn’t made friends in college yet. He’d talked to a couple people, yeah, and even held conversations with Ned and MJ a few times, but they always hurt too much to carry on for long, so he would come up with some excuse to leave when MJ started giving him that look. 

On one hand, he really wanted her to figure it out again. On the other hand, all he wanted was his friends out of harm’s way.

J Jonah Jameson was fired for exploiting a minor on national television, so he didn’t worry about the Daily Bugle much anymore. They didn’t steer towards the menace that is Spider-Man a lot. In fact, they actually would grace over what Spider-Man had done that day and continue with other news, like any regular, sane news station is supposed to do.

He wonders how the other Peters are. Do they remember him? Nothing about this seems right.

He looks down at the box on his bed, sitting with his legs folded up and crossed. He eyes the Iron Man comics and considers reading those, but decides that reading about Mister Stark right now might actually shatter the small amount of sanity he has left. So he takes those out and sets them to the side.

The next set is of Doctor Strange comics, a set that Ned had given him for his birthday just a year or two ago. He thinks that if he reads about him right now, he might actually have a tantrum and rip the pages until the words and pictures absolutely cannot be deciphered. So he steels himself and does what a sane college student who still reads comic books would do.

He throws them to the end of the bed, far away from him. Some of them slip off of the foot of the bed. Peter doesn’t care.

Then there’s Captain America comics, worn from not being touched since Germany.

Germany. Mister Stark. 

Next.

A few comics of himself from MJ. He doesn’t want to read about himself. He hears enough of it in his head.

Avengers comics. Thor ones. Hulk ones. Black Widow– Nat. He’d trained with her a couple of times. She taught him the “grab-the-shoulders-and-bang-on-their-heads” maneuver he used on the Green Goblin before he was slammed through six stories of apartment hallways. No, no, no, and no.

He’s just about to give up when he reaches the very bottom, some comics laid under the Captain Marvel ones Ned had gotten him for Christmas one year. Something he didn’t think about before. He remembered reading about what happened, about all of those people going missing, and how she was so much more powerful than Doctor Strange.

Some Scarlet Witch comics May had gotten him a little bit after robots terrorized New York. Again.

He’d only talked to Ms Maximoff a handful of times, so many times that he could count it on one hand, but when they had, they’d gotten along fairly well.

Why in the world hadn’t he just gone to her for help?

He decides that if he wants to keep his sanity, the least he can do is try this. If not, well, at least he went insane trying to fix something he broke.

Swinging from New York to New Jersey is not fun, Peter discovers quickly. By the time he lands in the location he needs to be in, he’s exhausted and out of breath. He hasn’t felt this bad since that one asthma attack he had in seventh grade and was put in the hospital, monitored on air and inhalers for a week. He’d nearly died. Or maybe after the spider bite. He’d almost died then, too. Peter’s not even sure if all of the medical bills had ever been paid off. May never told him.

The house is seemingly normal on the outside, a cabin excluded from any other neighboring towns, which is not creepy at all. The flower fields growing on the outside are beautiful. May would have loved them. The trees grow high and surround the house, and he can see a lake shimmering in the backyard.

But then he must take a wrong step or something, because everything suddenly turns red. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up– he sees above his head some kind of symbol go off. That’s weird, his spidey-sense has never looked like that before.

He’s looking around, half in awe and half terrified at the scenery and the continuous colorful symbols sprouting in the air above his head when he hears a door open and close. He whips around, and Ms Maximoff seems to be walking towards him, hands and eyes faintly glowing red.

“No! Wait!” he puts his hands up to show he means no harm.

She stops, lowering her hands and the red glow goes away.

“Peter?”

He stops. She knows his name? He’d fully expected to have to explain the entire situation, but he doesn’t want to risk anything.

Play dumb! Play dumb! his spidey-sense tells him. She, too, seems amused at the cartoonish colors around his head.

“Peter? Who’s Peter?”

Not that dumb!

She doesn’t acknowledge his stupidity. If anything, her face softens a little.

“Peter Parker,” she says in her accented voice. “what brings you here?”

“Ms Maximoff, ma’am, I don’t mean to intrude-”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry we never got to properly meet. I’m Wanda.”

Peter grins. “Peter.” he reaches out to shake her hand, to which she does the same. “But I guess you already knew that.”

“So what brings you here?” she asks again.

“Well, my identity was kinda revealed on national television, so I went to Mister Doctor Strange for help, right? And the spell he used got messed up because I don’t know how to shut up-”

“Wait a minute. The spell he cast?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Sounds like his fault to me.”

“Well, ye- wait. What?”

Wanda shrugs. “He cast it. He should have been paying attention to what he was doing.”

“Mister Wong did tell him that it was dangerous . . .” Peter thinks out loud.

Wanda nods. “See?”

“Huh.” Peter says, then shakes his head. “Look, that’s not why I’m here. So, apparently the spell being messed with, like, broke the multiverse or something-”

“Are you asking me about the multiverse?”

“I’m asking for my friends back.”

Wanda stops. “Back? Peter, I can’t just bring people back-”

“They’re not dead.” he says quickly. “Our universe was, like, collapsing or something, so I had Mister Doctor Strange cast another spell where everyone would forget me.”

“Why?”

“They were coming here . . . because of me.” Peter tells her, his eyes watering. “I don’t have anybody, Ms Maximoff.”

“What?”

“My aunt . . . a psychopath called the Green Goblin killed her. He was from a different universe. My friends, well, they forgot me when I had Doctor Strange cast that last spell. My best friend and my girlfriend. And when I told them I’d explain everything, which I really planned on doing, I found them and they had gotten into college and I thought, you know, maybe they’re better off without me. Safer. And then MJ told me that it felt like something was missing and I just . . . I couldn’t do it.” he says, crying now.

“Oh, Peter.” she says. “I- wait.”

“What is it?” he asks, then the yard goes back to the seemingly normal one he’d seen when he first arrived. His spidey-sense, which had apparently chilled out, appeared above his head again. 

“Someone’s coming,” she tells him, her eyes and hands starting to glow again. “go in the house.”

“But-”

“Peter,” she says gently, cupping his face and looking into his eyes. “go in the house.”

He doesn’t want to leave the one person who remembers him, but he does as she says and takes off towards the house.

Wanda was definitely not expecting visitors today, especially one that turned out to be Peter Parker. She had only spoken to him a few times, but dang the kid was hard not to love. She’d consider him a friend. In a way, talking to him, and him talking to her like she was human, felt nice. It filled a small part of the hole that her family being gone had left.

So, when they heard the sounds of someone coming, her glowing and cartoonish colors appearing over Peter’s head, she didn’t tell him to leave. She told him to go in the house. Her eyes glowing faintly, she walks over to a tree, pretending to have been admiring it when none other than Doctor Strange himself showed up in her yard. She had to fight the urge to blast him with her magic right then and there, what with what Peter had told her about him running through her head.

“Wanda,” he calls, walking towards her. “we need to talk.”

“Listen,” she starts. “I know I hurt a lot of people-”

“I’m not here to talk about Westview,” he says. 

“Then what is it?” she asks, and they start walking across the yard with no destination in particular. She will keep him away from the house, though.

“What do you know about the multiverse?”

She stops and looks at him. “Why?”

Strange sighs. “The multiverse is a concept of which we know frighteningly little-”

“Don’t use your wise words on me.” she snaps. “Vis had his theories. He believed it to be dangerous.”

Strange is quiet for a moment. “He was right.”

“So why are you here?”

“I need your help.”

“Let me guess. You cast some life-altering spell and now the universe as we know it is collapsing.”

“Well, yes, I’d say so.” he says. 

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” she says, and everything quickly turns red again. “you break the rules and become a hero. I do it, I become the enemy.” she pauses and lets the heaviness of her words truly sink in. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

Strange just stares at her.

Peter, although he hates to admit it, is eavesdropping. He wasn’t planning on it, but when Doctor Strange showed up, he just kind of felt like he had to. He gasped when he showed up, then quickly took to using his spider powers to both hide and to eavesdrop on the conversation between Wanda and Strange.

In one of his not-so-proud moments, he wishes just for a second that he would have left him dangling over the Grand Canyon. Then he misses who he considers to be his brothers, when they were really just alternate versions of him. And then he thinks of Ned and MJ again, and the pain hits him all over again. It feels as if he’s being crushed by another building.

He wonders if Doctor Strange remembers him, because he remembers the spell that nearly collapsed their universe, but he never mentions Peter, which is weird. How can he remember the spell and not Peter? What about the other Peters? Ned and MJ? Ned possessing freaking wizard powers ?

Peter should have gone to Wong. Maybe then his life wouldn’t have been one big freaking plot hole.

Or maybe he should have just come to Wanda to start with. He doesn’t really know. He doesn’t really know much of anything anymore, other than he’s lonely and if he has to spend one more day like this, the spell grating his life and sanity away like cheese, then he very well may just fake his own death.

He feels like the only reasons he has to live is to protect his friends from afar and keep May’s flowers at her grave fresh, and the other to be Spider-Man. He’d been forced to choose between his life as Spider-Man and his life as Peter Parker, and he chose Spider-Man, like an idiot. But he knew he couldn’t give up Spider-Man. May would want him to keep going, but not like this.

Sometimes he wishes he had killed the Green Goblin. But no. He just has to be a goody two-shoes.

The other Peters had said something about an uncle Ben. Who was that? He’d never known an Uncle Ben before. May had given him his with great power speech. 

 Outside he hears Strange say “Wait. What’s with all the colors?” and immediately thinks he’s been busted.

Hooray. Even more fun for him to deal with.

“Wanda,” Strange says slowly. “What’s with all the colors up there?”

Wanda looks up, face immediately paling. Peter.

“That’s nothing.” she says. He looks at her, frowning.

“Yeah. Nothing like I’ve ever seen before. And I’ve seen a lot.” He starts to head over to her front door.

“Okay, just . . . just wait a minute.” she says, stopping him. 

She runs inside, looking for Peter.

“Peter!”

He comes out of one of the upstairs bedrooms. He looks scared.

“Strange saw?” he asks, gesturing around his head.

Wanda nods. “Yeah.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Peter says honestly. “It’s never done this before.”

“I don’t know what it is either,” she says. “but we’re going to have to improvise. He’s curious.”

Peter groans. “Great.”

“Yeah,” Wanda agrees. “great.”

“Doctor Strange, this is my, uh, brother. Peter.” Wanda smiles awkwardly. “Peter, Doctor Strange.”

Peter offers a pained smile, but Wanda sees a scowl hidden behind it. “Nice to meet you, sir. Big fan.”

“So, Mister Maximoff,” Strange says, and Wanda and Peter both flinch slightly at that. “Are you enrolled anywhere?”

No. He had to drop out of high school and get a GED because of your freaking spell, Wanda thinks, and she notices Peter is trembling a little bit.

“Uh, MIT, sir.”

Doctor Strange looks impressed. “MIT, you say? Impressive.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Okay!” Wanda says, clapping her hands together. “Well, this was fun, but Peter and I have something to do, so if you could just come back later.”

“Wait, Wanda. I need to know what you know about the multiverse.” he says. Peter clenches his fists and dips out of the living room. Strange notices, apparently. “Does he know something?”

Wanda takes a deep breath. “He knows enough. He’s . . . seen a lot a kid his age shouldn’t have to.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not me you should be apologizing to,” Wanda says quietly. “Listen, my uh, my brother needs some help with something and then I’ll come help you. Okay? But it’ll be later.”

“Wanda, forgive me, but the fabric of our universe is currently tearing apart at the seams.”

“And I said we’ll fix it later,” she says, trying to keep her eyes from glowing anything more than a faint red when all she really wanted to do was blast him into the next dimension. “we’ve done it once and we’ll do it again. But I have to help Peter first.”

Strange nods hesitantly, knowing he’s lost. “As you wish.” he says. “And tell your brother I wish him the best.”

Wanda nods, swallowing. “Bye now.” she says, and sees Strange back outside.

“Okay, Peter.” she whispers, a faint grin on her face. She wasn’t looking for pity and Peter wasn’t looking for charity, but maybe this would lead her a step away from being the enemy. “you first.”

Little brother.

Peter’s world glows red. He knows his eyes are closed, and he can see faint multi-colored symbols over his head. Wanda says some words, some he knows and some he doesn’t, and then his world is spinning. Or is he? That would be funny, considering he’s floating midair on his back. 

And then he’s back. Ms. Maximoff is floating, too, only she’s in a legs-crossed sitting position, as if she’s meditating, rather than laying down as if she’s only floating around in a pool.

She opens her eyes, red fading back to normal along with the really freaking cool Scarlet Witch outfit. As in, it literally melted, a red glitchy line turning it back into her normal clothes. They both float downwards onto their feet. 

“I hope everything works out, Peter.” she says.

“Thank you.” he replies. “Thank you so much.” he tries to get rid of the tears in his eyes.

Wanda pulls him into a hug. “No. Thank you .”

Peter hugs her back, not quite knowing what she meant. “You’re welcome.”

They let go. “Let me know if you ever need anything.” she says. “I magically put my number in your phone.”

“I will. Thank you,” he says. “And . . . same goes for you. If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to call your little brother.” he grins.

“And you can call your big sister.” Wanda says, smiling back.

Peter closes his apartment door, shoulders sore from all of the swinging he’d done today. All he wanted was to flop down in his small bed. He’d deal with the world for tomorrow.

But apparently, the world had other plans. The banging knocks on his door told him so.

He drug himself out of bed, rubbing his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping well before today, but he'd done more swinging than he’d done in a while. That’s what he gets for patrolling right after swinging back from New Jersey.

He drags himself towards the door, unlocking the latches and opening it. He’d expected it to be another give-me-rent visit. What he hadn’t been expected was to be tackled by a hug.

“Peter!”

Michelle.

“M’chelle?”

“I really hate magic.” she says, tears falling down her face.

“I’m sorry.” he says, voice breaking. 

“I wondered who Peter Parker was.” she says. “I followed his account on instagram. I had his number in my phone. There were pictures of you in my phone, but it was just the random regular customer at the coffee shop. Drawings on my wall. My necklace.”

“Why did you wear it if you didn’t know where it came from?”

“I don’t know. There was no explanation as to how I got it. I just . . . I just knew it was important. And then when I saw you in the coffee shop it was like a sense of . . . recognition?”

“So you knew who I was, but you didn’t know who I was.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“So, I’m sure you’re pissed and you’re suppressing it with happiness, love, and relief?”

“Ohhh yeah,” MJ says. “you are in for it later. From me and Ned.”

“I can’t wait.” Peter says, and he really means it. “We should call him and all have a movie night.”

“That’s a great idea.” MJ says. “Should I call him?”

“That would probably be best.” Peter says. “Why would he come if he doesn’t know who I am.”

“But he should know.”

“But he doesn’t know .”

“Yeah,” Michelle replies. “. . . okay.”

When Peter wakes up around midnight, it’s to voices. Disembodied voices whispering his name. Apparently, Ned and MJ don’t hear it. They stay sound asleep; MJ on the bed, Ned on the floor. Peter’s also on the floor, having immediately offered the bed to MJ after she insisted on staying. Apparently, she was not ready for Peter to leave her sight so soon, or anytime soon, and honestly, Peter doesn’t blame her. Ned expressed his hesitance as well. So his newly refound best friend and girlfriend took to spending the night in his dingy, gross, empty and unfurnished apartment.

He gets up to investigate. He doesn’t see anyone. Carefully, he tiptoes around, webshooters at the ready. In the back of his mind he knows they most likely would be absolutely zero help against disembodied voices.

The voices keep moving around, sending him on a chase around his own apartment. But he knows he won’t be able to fall back asleep until he knows what’s going on. They whisper his name over and over again.

Peter. Peter. Peter.

He swears he’s heard it before. He just can’t quite place it.

Peter. Peter. Peter.

Something happens then: a pain behind his eyes, in his head, something dripping down his face. Everything turns red. His world spins, bringing him face-to-face with a fellow former Avenger.

“Ms Maximoff?”

Shh. her voice says, a ghostly finger scraping over his lips. You want revenge?

“Well, I mean . . .” he says, and she shushes him again.

Don’t speak. Only think. Do you see what he took from you? The red fades away, the image of Ned and MJ sleeping soundly not far from him revealing itself. The red fades back. He took it from you, Peter. Doesn’t that make you . . . angry?

“Well, I’m not usually one to hold grudges-”

Shh. Don’t speak. Only think. she repeats. Look deep down. You’re angry, are you not? Or is there not the tiniest spark of spite inside of your pure heart and soul?

And there it was: the lie he’d told himself for so long.

Flashes. The comic books, wanting to tear Strange’s into tiny, indecipherable pieces. Anger at Strange for not making a different suggestion, a different solution to his world-ending predicament. Because even though the world survived, his did not. His crumpled right in front of him in mere seconds. MJ and Ned, gone. The anger at May for not listening to him when he told her to run. The admiration when she didn’t. The worry that always consumes his entire being. Anger at Tony for leaving him. Dying for five years and coming back to a world moved on without him, with no place for him anymore. The absolute crushing urge to murder Mysterio. Beck betraying him when he thought he’d finally made a friend he could talk to that understood the reality of being a superhero.

He was, overall, really freaking angry. 

All. The. Time.

The voices start up again. They all talk at the same time, saying: aren’t you angry? Angry, Peter? Revenge? Tired of being picked on? Left behind? FORGOTTEN? 

You’re angry, Peter Parker. 

He was. But that wasn’t the worst part.

You’re angry. And that’s okay.

His world spins again as he screams, somehow not waking Ned and MJ in the other room. He screams his throat raw. That . . . that stuff is rolling down his face again. He realizes now, hazily, that it’s blood pouring from his eyes and nose. Things break around him; he feels some kind of . . . strange feeling emit from him, his body, his hands, his mind.

Revenge. He wants revenge.

He opens his eyes and realizes it’s glass breaking around him, the same as one of the dimensional chases he and Strange pursued.

Strange. 

He screams again, punching the glass. He was stronger than Strange now. He defeated the astral projection, defeated Strange in another dimension; defeating him twice on two of the man’s own turfs. He’s a stronger, better Avenger than Strange.

That’s it. Get angry.

He is. He is very angry– extremely angry with everything. He catches a quick glance of himself in the broken glass around him.

His eyes are glowing red.

Somewhere else, Wanda grins. It widens when the teenage boy’s hand reaches out of the glass, and he crawls out of the distorted dimension, bloody hands and face and all.

He looks at Wanda, the eyes losing their glow slowly.

“Where do I start?”

Chapter Text

Peter shoots up in a cold sweat from his place on the floor. No voices this time, only the sound of Ned’s snoring and Michelle’s soft breathing. No red. No glass. He stares down at his hands, then reaches out in front of him, half-expecting to have to break out from another sort of glass prison, but instead his hand swipes at air. There’s nothing. He rubs his eyes, but everything is still the same, still normal, when he moves them away.

He stands up and stretches, making his way over to the small bathroom. He enters and closes the door behind him, locking it. The glance he gets of himself in the mirror tells him that he looks exhausted, maybe even beyond that. But nothing is swirling, nothing is red. Everything is normal.

So maybe it was just a dream?

No. There’s no way. It felt absolutely way too real for it to be just a dream. So what was it? He glances in the mirror again. He jumps backwards when his eyes glow a faint red for a split second before fading back to their normal brown. 

Once again he reaches out in front of him, somehow embarrassingly getting the feeling that he’s in some cheesy Disney movie, but it changes to the opposite end of the spectrum and he suddenly feels like he’s in a thriller, or maybe even a full-blown horror movie when he’s sucked into it, like that one really old Mickey Mouse episode Mister Stark had shown him once.

Once again, he’s surrounded by glass, only this time he’s really scared. The whispers are back, but they’re distorted and staticy, so he can’t tell what they’re saying. The only words he can catch besides his name are “multiverse”, “america” and “revenge”.

“No, no . . .” he says, desperately trying to escape, banging so hard on the glass his hands start to bleed. “no! Get me out of here! LET ME OUT!” but each time he hits the glass it only breaks into smaller pieces, getting him nowhere new and only giving him more scars on his body. “Not again! NO! I’ve been through this twice already- NO, AH!” his eyes and nose bleed again and he continues to try and fight his way out.

Peter.

Peter . . .

Peter!

A different voice, a familiar one. It’s still distorted, but he knows it and takes comfort in it, rather than it making him want to scream his throat raw. 

Then, really quickly, he’s jumpscared by his Aunt May saying his name and glitching in and out right in front of him really fast.

PETER!

He jolts awake again, and it’s not his aunt or some distorted, corrupted voices or Wanda in his ear, but Michelle.

“Peter? You with me?”

“‘uh?”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Michelle says, sighing in relief. “you really scared me there.”

“Ugh,” he says, holding a hand up to his head as he sits up. Michelle helps him. “Woah. Slow down. I’m not going anywhere.” her face goes grim. “And you’re not either.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” he says, scooting backwards so he can lean on the wall. “Never again.”

“Good,” she replies. “so, what happened here?”

“I . . . don’t know.” he tells her in all honesty. “I fell?”

“You don’t sound too convinced. The floor’s not wet, so ‘I slipped’ wouldn’t exactly work. Maybe you just tripped and- oh, you’re bleeding.”

“I am?” he says, and, sure enough, when he moves his hand away, it’s covered with blood. “Holy crap.”

“What?” she asks as he shoots up from the floor.

“I have to go to- somewhere.” he says, catching himself. He takes his shirt off at record speed, then his pants, and they’re replaced with his Spider-Man suit at breakneck speed.

“Peter, wait!”

“I’ll be back,” he says, looking back at her from where he’s crouched in the windowsill. She looks at him skeptically. “I promise.”

“Last time . . .” she trails off, then changes her approach. “You better.” she says, looking down at her feet.

“Hey,” he says, leaping off. “How’s this for a promise?” He leans in and pulls her closer until their lips meet. “We’re in this together.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?” she asks, a tear falling from her eye. He wipes it away.

“Because I’m trying to protect you. I promise I’ll tell you when we’re all safe again.”

“So . . . never.” she smiles and he laughs.

“We’ll figure it out,” he tells her. “Just like we’ll figure out how Ned slept through all of this.”

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He lands in the red again, but this time, there’s no glass or voices. There’s just red and void and ruins and lies. 

He will never ever come back to New Jersey when all of this is over. 

“MS MAXIMOFF!” he shouts, making his way up to her cabin. He immediately bangs on the door as soon as it’s within arms reach. “MS MAXIMOFF!”

The door blows open and he sees her turn around, surprised, and she floats downwards back to her feet, eyes soft against her Scarlet Witch side, the old Wanda shining through.

“Peter! What’s-”

“What did you do?” he says, feeling like he’s seen more crap than someone his age should have to see in an entire lifetime. His eyes are burning.

“You’re bleeding, okay, just-”

“No!” he shouts. “What did you do to me?”

She looks genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb with me! You know about the red, and the glass, and the voices. What’s happening to me?”

“I don’t-”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!” he shouts, and all the windows break and wind is blowing like crazy, but affecting nothing. “WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME?”

“I don’t know, Peter.” she says. “I really don’t know.” she looks to the side, and the sound of pages flipping vaguely makes its way to his ears. “There’s nothing here that helps.”

“Last night couldn’t have been a dream, Wanda .”

Her eyes glow a faint red, then she starts to explain. “Last night . . . was no dream.” her heavily accented voice tells him. . . .

. . . to which he replies, “I never told you anything about last night.”

“You didn’t, did you?” she says. “Well played. Very clever. I like you, Peter.”

“What’s happening to me?” he asks again, trying not to leak all of his desperation into his tone. “Please help me.”

Wanda sighs. “I’m trying to help you, Peter. So I’m not doing anything to you. I’m doing it for you.”

“Then why am I constantly bleeding out of my face? I’m surprised my eyeballs haven’t fallen out yet.”

Wanda chuckles. “They won’t. Come. I want to show you something.”

Everything in Peter’s heart tells him he shouldn’t go, but his mind’s been playing tricks on him very consistently as of late, so he’s starting to learn that maybe he shouldn’t trust it as much right now.