Fire and Smoke - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter 60

For some reason, I wake up when it's still dark outside. I can tell it's still early in the morning by the fact that no light is escaping through the heavy curtains in front of the big windows. I lie in a state of half-consciousness for a little while, wondering what woke me up. I wasn't dreaming. I notice that I'm lying on my side, my left arm being trapped uncomfortably under me. Maybe it was that. I shuffle slightly, pulling my arm out from under me. It tingles happily, the blood flow returning to it.

I then fall deadly still. A soft noise behind me on the other side of the bed reaches me and I even stop breathing for a second, trying to decipher the sound.

There it is again! My initial excitement at hearing the sound again shatters quickly as I realize what the sound is, and most importantly, who it is coming from. It's Wanda, and it sounds as though she is crying silently. I can tell she's trying not to wake me by the sound of her crying being slightly muffled like she's crying into her pillow.

I instantly wonder why I am not reaching out to console her. Then I start to realize, the heaviness of our conversation last night crashing down on me. And it is then that I recognize she hasn't turned to me in her sadness either. She has retreated to herself, just like she always does.

My heart sinks and I wish I would have just slept through it, innocently unaware of her pain. But the barely perceptible sounds of her trying to keep her breathing even as to not alert me makes me feel selfish for even having a thought like that.

I lie silently for a little while, trying to understand where this would be coming from. I try to push it away, because it cannot surely be... but no, I keep going back to our conversation yesterday. Is she regretting what she said? Should I regret what I said? It just... slipped out. So easily. I do think I meant it, and I did feel like she did too. But I've never said that to anyone, so how do I know if I really love her? It could be the fact that we've gone through so much together, making us co-dependant... I search my feelings as I think of her and come up with... It's a feeling so peculiar. I can't put a finger on it, I can't use any words to describe it. I decide to accept whatever it is that I feel every time I think of her as love, as it is the closest to it I think I've ever felt. Isn't love just wanting to be around someone all the time? Wanting to hold them and make them never have to feel any pain, to feel all of their pain for them and wish them to smile and laugh and be the one that makes them smile and laugh?

But what does she feel for me? When she said those three words to me I felt that it was real enough, I felt like I could float and I felt right. But there's a small part of me that wants to drag me down, make me catch my breath. And I can't be sure. It's a feeling too peculiar.

I love him but I love you. He is gone and you are here and I love you.

Those were her words. But I love you. Should I love you be preceded with a 'but'? Should I love you come after he is gone and you are here? I feel my heart ache in canon with her soft cries. The more she says the less I know and I don't know why everything has to be so complicated for us. She once said that everything keeps pulling us apart and I can't help but agree. Would there ever have been an 'us' if she hadn't lost everything? Is her having nothing the reason I am everything?

I turn slowly onto my back, lying still looking up at the ceiling. She keeps her next sniffle in, probably afraid that she's disturbed my sleep. Or afraid I know. For a little while, I wonder if I should just pretend I never woke up, that I never knew she was crying alone in the darkness with me right there next to her. And that she chose to not take comfort in me. That she once again chose to suffer alone.