Fire and Smoke - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter 93

I just feel so anxious. Too anxious. It's all I'm able to feel, lately. Anxiety. On edge. Tenseness. That gnawing, unsettling feeling at the pit of your stomach, which spreads slowly throughout your body, coldly, making your heart race and your hands cold and clammy. Although I normally am able to quell that emotion by running, going to the gym, or drinking alone in that little grimy pub back home, now, the feeling just won't leave me. I tried to run, to exercise, and yet my legs felt weak and I was gasping for air within minutes. It's like I'm wearing a corset, and it forces me to breathe shallowly. Nothing gets in, but everything gets out. I keep bleeding. For a little while there, I thought that I had found something in Wanda, something that sucked that feeling out of me, leaving me just being me. Whole, and maybe even safe. But hindsight is everything, and know I can't escape my anxiety at all, especially around her. I'm not safe. And neither is she around me. My heart flutters away in my chest.

I kick a stone in front of me in angry contemplation as I walk aimlessly around, the cabin hosting my problems not too far away behind me. I've walked around in circles for about half an hour or so, but time doesn't really mean anything to me anymore. But I have to admit defeat. I'm too cold to stray further. I tuck my hands in my armpits, trying to keep warm, my chest feeling weird. I have a headache too, to add to my physical discomfort. I feel so exhausted mentally. I know I have to stay, I promised Wanda and I promised myself I owed it to her, after everything I put her through, but really, I just want to run away. I've admitted defeat. She could have been my solace and I could have been happy. Maybe she even could have learned to be happy with me. She did seem it. Could-haves are unfortunately all I can count on in life.

Mount Wundagore towers over me as I feel small and sorry for myself, the gray clouds becoming heavier and heavier rather quickly, already thick enough to hide the very top of the mountain from view. I shiver. I never felt truly welcome here. I think back to my grandparents' country house, the one I spoke to Wanda about once, and I wish I was there. In another life, maybe I could have taken her there. I think she might have liked it. Could-have.

I sigh heavily as a gust of wind brings with it a couple of little, shy, droplets of rain. I need to get back, or I risk getting totally soaked. I make a u-turn and begrudgingly walk back the way I came from, not wishing to know what situation I'm going to be walking in on. I wonder if Natasha has managed to persuade Vision to join her suicide pact, or if Vision has finally decided to give into Wanda and just stay with her as she wished him to. Or maybe even Yelena has convinced Natasha to figuratively not jump off that cliff. I wipe a raindrop off my brow. What a great fucking situation I've found myself in. One suicidal Russian assassin, one all too perceptive robot, and a witch who is stuck in the past, mentally. For a moment I wonder if Yelena and Darcy would just run away with me. Fuck, I need a drink.

"Get it together, Liv." I mutter to myself, trying to snap out of my spiraling.

I fall into a brisk jogging pace despite my body's complaints and my mind wishing to be anywhere else but where I'm headed. I feel my breath rattle in my lungs and briefly wonder if I might not be catching a cold.

I quickly catch sight of the cabin again, lonely and dark with the jet nearby. The clouds have gotten so heavy now that they are blocking out most of the daylight from reaching the valley, and the world seems to no longer harbor shadows as everything begins to resemble an amorphous entity. I trip a couple of times on invisible roots as my legs go lazy, but I don't fall all the way to the ground. The lights inside the cabin shine warmly, beckoning me inside. For a second I allow a fantasy about me returning from a long jog to find just Wanda inside the cabin, cooking me her favorite soup before we huddle up on the couch together, conversing like we used to. I let the fantasy go though, because that is what it is. A could-have.