sheltering the boy I knew (from the hell that I put him through)

Part 2

As soon as Wanda realized she had hurt Peter, regret hit her hard in the gut. Now that she was a mother herself, the sight of someone so young who had been hurt by what she did had a whole new effect on her. What if that had been Tommy, or Billy, who she hit?

'What if that was Pierto?' her mind had asked her. She'd hit Peter with that blast, just like Pietro had been hit with bullets, and he had saved Director Hayward, just like Pietro had saved Clint so many years ago.

The scene was all too familiar to her.

Slowly stepping forward, she watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest and let out a small gasp upon seeing the smoke that came up from his body. Beside her, the power in her hands diminished completely and the smell of burning flesh filled the air as the guns were aimed back at her. She didn't care, though. Instead, she blinked back tears of shock and stood still, her stare unmoving as two people, a man in an FBI uniform and a woman with glasses, ran towards the boy, the man kneeling beside him and waving his arms to call medics over while the woman screamed and tried to feel for a pulse.

"Stand down, Wanda! Stand down!" A woman shouted, most likely Geraldine, or Monica. Whatever her name was.

"Look at what you're doing, Wanda!" The man shouted, the one she was aiming for, and she finally looked away from Peter (''Pietro,' her mind supplied) and back to him. "You're hurting people. You've stolen a corpse, taken an entire town hostage, and now you've hurt a child! How much longer is this going to go on?! How many more people have to be mind controlled, hurt, even killed?! How selfish do you have to be?!"

Wanda stopped dead in her tracks and froze. She was doing this for Vision, for her boys, for everyone. If anything, she was being selfless, risking everything she had for them. Couldn't they see that?

With a huff, she turned around, walking back to the barrier and pried it open, ignoring the screams and protests behind her, yelling for her to come back, yelling for her to fix this. She would not allow herself to be ridiculed for helping her family. With that thought in mind, she crossed the barrier back into Westview and made sure to close, to seal, the opening behind her, before she continued making her way back to her home; back to her family, who would be there for her.

'I know what I'm doing is right,' she thought to herself. 'They just don't understand how alone I was and how empty I felt. I'm doing this for my family, no one else. And now one else will get in my way. But that poor boy...'

She didn't want to hurt anyone, especially someone who didn't deserve it. Someone who once again just ended up on the wrong side of things. But that was exactly what she did, and couldn't help but think of it. 'What if he's dead? What if I killed him?'

'Just like I killed all those people in Lagos...'

She ran over to one of the trash cans and barely managed to hover over it before she puked. The images flooded back to her mind of the fact that his body was smoking and he was struggling to breathe.

The same feeling she got when she killed the innocent civilians in Lagos hit her. The regret, the guilt, the terror and panic she felt at being declared a monster, at seeing not only her name, but also the body count flash across the TV screens... everything flooded back, and it hit her all at once.

She coughed a few more times before standing up and recomposing herself. Vision and the boys couldn't see her like this. She had to be strong for them.