for incitatio

[ This wasn't supposed to happen. The life she'd built in Westview, as fictional and play-pretend as it might have been, was meant to be pain free and perfect, an idyllic and forever home for Wanda after spending the last twenty or so years wondering what the word even meant. She'd brought Vision back - or some version of Vision, the one that she'd needed the most - and she'd given them a marriage and children and everything she had only ever dreamed of or watched on tv as a young girl, long before Sokovia had been reduced to rubble and she'd suffered her first true loss in the form of her parents' untimely death.

It hadn't mattered in the slightest that nothing about Westview was real, or that she was constantly smoothing over the ever-changing cracks in the town's foundation while warding off Vision's mounting suspicions. It hadn't even bothered her when an intruder had managed to make their way past the forcefield; she'd taken care of that as best as she could and everything had - for the most part - gone completely back to normal.

Vision. The house that he'd built for her. Their two children. There had only been one thing missing, really, but she could barely even think about Pietro without her perfected control on the town slipping -

But then there was Agatha, and she'd taken everything from Wanda with a wave of one witchy hand. ]

NO! [ She's back home now, or what's left of it, and the startling emptiness of it all is further magnified by the way the walls, floors, and furniture are shifting all beneath and around her as great, painful bursts of magic spark at her slender fingertips, sending gold-flecked embers throughout the living room as she forces herself to bend at the waist, her tiny arms wrapping helplessly around her quivering, sorrow-wracked frame as she squeezes her eyes shut and sobs. She doesn't know what she's crying for anymore - Vision is gone, but had he ever really been there to begin with? Was it even him that she'd brought back in the first place, or some make belief version of him that she'd twisted with a mixture of longing and grief into a clueless husband? The children they'd borne and raised in a span of weeks; nothing about that had been real either, had it? No, Wanda realized with a sobering, devastating dawn of understanding; the only thing that was real here was her, and she was entirely alone.]

Pietro. [ His name, the one she hadn't allowed herself to speak since setting foot in Westview, falls from her lips now like a broken prayer, and there's no longer any way for her to hide her delicate Sokovian accent as she sounds out each syllable through an endless sea of tears. There's something building inside of her - a great, burning warmth of magic that she isn't able to contain fully between the small palms of her hands - and her mind is suddenly overwhelmed with a barrage of images she's spent the last three years trying so hard to suppress.

Icy blonde hair, cheekbones that arched like wings, stormy blue eyes that shone like fire blazing in the heart of a glacier when he was angry. Quick, clever, calloused hands that were never anything but gentle when they were on her -

Pietro. PietroPietroPietro. It's too much, suddenly, and she can no longer catch her breath through her tears; with a piercing, broken cry, the dam is collapsing, and from its rickety hold comes a barrage of magic so fierce and intense that it forces Wanda backwards into the soon-to-be ruin of her once-pristine home. Her vision blurs, and she has no idea what's happening, but she can only assume that she's tapped into whatever vestiges of her powers Agatha had been hinting at, and in that dizzying moment, she cares very little if she lives or dies - if only because there's no longer anything waiting for her at either end. ]