The Scarlet Apprentice

An old friend

The day continued in a calm and light manner, as opposed to the chaotic events that had happened an hour before. However, there was now a noticeable change of scenery for the two girls.

Y/n now laid, rested in wanda's bed, tucked nicely under the quaint covers. She still hadn't woken up since the very moment she closed her eyes, but wanda wasn't going to give up hope at all. So, wanda  sat on the bed beside her - y/n's hand loosely resting in hers - and she waited. She waited patiently, hoping that y/n would wake up spontaneously and without any signs of damage.

However, the wait took longer than wanda was hoping for, and her worry began to enlarge as she sat in silence. Her thumb slowly traced a line on the back of y/n's hand as she allowed her mind to fall into a state of wonder and hope.

Her mind took her to all the places she knew she'd go to once she knew that y/n was going to be okay. For a moment, a slight comfort hovered over her, but it was nothing compared to the comfort she would've gotten if y/n was awake and conscious beside her.

One moment wanda was staring deeply at the rested features on y/n's face, but the next, she was jolted out of it due to the sound of the front door being gently knocked on. Surprisingly, the knock didn't startle her at all. In fact, it provided the complete opposite emotion; a slight sense of hope and trust that overcame her as she paced through the hallway and to the front door.

The second she opened the door, her eyes locked with his ash eyes and watched the way he looked down at her. His face was blank and pale, showing no signs of opinion for wanda to make an assumption from.

"I'm sorry." She looked up at what she assumed was a  disappointed face with her sorrowed eyes, "i'm sorry- i didn't want to call you all the way out here, but i-."

"Where is she?" The doctor cleared his throat as he lightly pushed past her to get into the room.

"Back there." Wanda pointed to her bedroom door.

While she watched the doctor march his way over to the room she sighed with her head down and shut the front door quietly, and only then did she join him at his side in the room.

Anxiously, wanda stood, biting the nail of her thumb while watching everything the help she'd called in was going to do, even if she didn't quite understand it or the methods.

"How long has she been out?" Stephen asked, twisting his fingers in a pattern that began to create light sparks.

"About an hour." Wanda told him.

Without asking anything else, strange expanded the magic he was creating at his finger tips and rested it in the air above y/n's sleeping body. It floated above her, providing a window like sight for him to be able to look at the changes happening within her body, rather than the limited knowledge he would've got from the outside.

By now, the energy that entered her body had joined with her bloodstream and became part of her; a part of her so strong that nothing the doctor could've done would've changed it. Once he assessed the basics; such as her breath pattern and heart rate; he came with a brief conclusion.

"She'll be okay." He assured wanda, noticing the way she sighed in relief, "for now, at least."

Wanda stepped forward, shyly, "do you know what it is?"

He cleared his throat, glancing through the door of transparency, "From what I can see, it's nothing too different from yours."

"Hows that even possible?" Wanda asked, her brows falling to a furrow.

"Wanda, I spent so long revising the origins of witches, sorcerers and magic. There are books that explain the history of the scarlet witch and the scarlet apprentice, but the darkhold isn't one of them. The darkhold gives the power, but not so much the explanation." He explained.

"Wait- wait." She paused, "did you say... scarlet apprentice?"

"The scarlet witch is incredibly powerful, yes, but that doesn't mean she worked alone. She had a trainee, an apprentice, who she worked to build up into something bigger." Although he knew more about the history of the red witches, he didn't go into full detail; not yet, anyway.

She asked, "Can she do everything I can?"

"Wanda, you're a telepath, right?" He rhetorically asked, "you can go into the depths of people's mind and find or place what you want. Although the scarlet apprentice was forged to follow in your footsteps, the powers are slightly different."

Wanda crossed her eyes, her brow furrowing even more, if that was possible, "how different?"

"You have telepathic powers, the scarlet apprentice has empathic ones." He summed up, "if this is what I think it is, y/n will be able to explore the depths of peoples emotions."

"Strange, this seems like a big part to my legacy. Why wouldn't the darkhold tell me anything about this?" She asked with a slight annoyance.

"Do you think the book would let just anyone read about how to become the scarlet witch?" He asked, and continued when she didn't reply, "it hid the scarlet apprentice part from you, because you're not the scarlet apprentice. The same way it would've hidden the scarlet witch part from y/n's perspective."

All that resulted on wandas face after hearing that was a confused expression that she tried to hide. But, although she tried, Stephen picked up on it and cleared his throat while closing the slice of magic he had floating in the space above y/n.

"This is why you shouldn't have taken that book. You don't know it's rules, you don't know how to safely use it." He sighed ever so slightly as he turned to her.

"Well, I wasn't just going to hand it over to sword, was I?" She sarcastically shot back as she stood, looking up at him.

"There are people who could've kept it safe, people like me." He told her, almost sounding disappointed as he began slowly making his way back over to the door.

"You were nowhere to be found, strange." She bluntly argued, her tone soon swelling to a stone cold one, "don't you think I tried to reach out? You're a hard person to get ahold of."

With a gulp, he coughed, "I'm going back to the sanctum and I'm taking the book with me." He explained, "y/n looks like she'll be fine, she'll just need a rest. I don't know how long it will take, she's taken a lot of energy in in such a short time."

"Thank you, Stephen, for doing that, I needed the assurance." She nodded to him as he grasped the front door, the darkhold now clasped in his other hand.

"Will you be okay?" He asked her, his brows furrowed in sympathetic worry.

She nodded briefly, "yeah. Yeah, I'll be okay."

"If anything goes wrong, you know how to get in contact with me." He reminded her, stepping out onto the porch once again; this time in exit.