Fire and Smoke - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter 71

Healing doesn't happen in a straight line.

That was something my therapist used to say to me. Well, back when I would still dutifully attend my FBI mandated sessions. It was either that or staying away from work. So, an easy, but unpleasant choice. I used to sit in that stale office, pretending to listen and to be engaged, most of the words spoken meaningless and shallow, wastes of time. It's rather ironic that now is the first time I actually recall anything my therapist tried to talk me through. What better time than now for those annoying words to find their way back from my subconsciousness to my consciousness only to wring my heart.

Healing doesn't happen in a straight line. Ugh. There used to be a part of me, deep, deep down which used to curl up in something resembling anger or perhaps resentment when it heard that line. I never quite understood why. After all, what else was that sentence if but an overly cheesy cliché, without any real significance or consequence? Why would I react to it in any other way than by rolling my eyes at it?

Healing doesn't happen in a straight line.

Fuck you, sincerely.

Now, many months after hearing that sentence for the first time, that little part of me, that deeply tucked away part of me, that angry, that resentful, that scared part of me seems to have just expanded and expanded until it has fully become me. I don't know a huge amount of stuff for certain, but right at this moment, right now, I feel like I can pretty well state that I know that healing doesn't happen in a straight line, never mind in a fucking line in the first place. Healing is just an overused word to signify time passing, and our emotions growing stale around our wounds until they form a hard scab over the wound, and then, our emotions can rarely poke us and hurt us anymore. Healing doesn't happen. You can't heal from something unless time passes, and when the thing that keeps hurting you, and the thing you keep hurting live so intrinsically connected lives, no one heals, no one scabs over.

That is what goes on inside of my head as I numbly am forced to drag Wanda's limp body through the corridor I barged through eons ago, naively thinking I could change anything, that I could save her. I wonder what my therapist would have to say about this if he could see me right now. Here I am, Olivia, me, hello, having just pressed a little button and potentially made someone completely lose their sense of identity. Not just someone, but someone I love. And someone who said they loved me, trusted me. What am I supposed to do now, Mr. Therapist? Re-evaluate, meditate and refocus?

Sincerely, fuck you.

After I pressed the button, I seem to not be able to really recall what happened at the same time as I can recall everything in such painful detail I suspect it might be etched to the writing of my very cells to never be forgotten. I'm blurry on the details. And yet not. My fingers still feel like they hold that cool box in between them, the feeling of the sleek, satin-like black button is imprinted on my skin. I won't ever be able to wash away the feeling. The feeling of the electricity burning through the wires, burning away. Away from me. Away from me and towards her. From me. To her.

My body has decided to at once forget and to never forget at the same time. As though to make sure that I am entirely clear on whose fault Wanda's pain ultimately is, Strucker simply told me to undo Wanda's restraints, remove her cuffs but leave the one around her neck, and to take her back to our cell. I physically bear the result of what I just did in my arms. There is no denying, no re-evaluating, meditating, or refocusing on the result of my actions.

Wanda was always surprisingly light and tiny. I can easily remember several moments when I would be surprised by her smallness when she somehow seems to loom so large in my mind and in my life. Yet here I am, carrying the person who weighs so heavily on my mind with little difficulty. The stress of her last few years has worn her thin, and I've just gone and broken what was already cracked. I forget it is Wanda I am carrying. I'm not carrying just Wanda. I am carrying an entire lifetime of guilt in my arms.