"Wait, you love me?"
*****
Wanda wants to be a good mother. Maybe even the best. She wants to be the kind of mom who patches up owies and bakes cookies and always has the perfect thing to say to make young tears go away.
Yeah, well, that ain’t happening.
Every attempt at baking ends up burnt, and Vision’s better at that anyway, despite the fact that he doesn’t eat. The twins are far past the age for skinned knees and owies that she can kiss better. Nope, their physical mishaps result in trips to urgent care, where they grit their teeth as the nurse stitches them up, while Wanda tries not to visibly freak the fuck out. And saying the perfect thing? Ha. To be fair, the words always sound perfect in her mind, but the boys just get more pissed off at her or angsty or both.
She tries, though, and maybe someday she’ll actually believe Vision when he reassures her that trying is the most important part of parenthood.
A year and a half ago, she and Vis rescued the twins from a universe where they’d been orphaned and left alone on a planet that was in ruins. As they’d all walked through the portal that America had created (she and Wanda have patched things up, sort of), Wanda thought that this just might be her second chance to do things right. No chance of Westview version 2.0, obviously, which was probably a good thing. They bought a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that strained their savings to the absolute limit, but at least it was theirs. Walking distance to the new Avengers’ headquarters, a good middle school nearby, and even a park down the street. The twins have spent countless afternoons in counseling sessions, working through more trauma than children should ever experience (Wanda knows that all too well.) She and Vision have even spent time in therapy, both couples’ and separately. Things are finally starting to settle into place. Life isn’t perfect, and she’s definitely not the perfect mom. But she can see it on the horizon.
Yup, they’re a happy family – one with a father who’s still dealing with his resurrection, a mother who is only beginning to process a lifetime of fuck-ups, and two boys whose traumatic childhood is compounded by them being, well, 13-year-old boys with mood swings and hormones and a complete lack of common sense. (She loves them more than life itself. She truly does. But… yeah.)
Their first Halloween after the rescue actually went okay. Wanda had to keep reminding herself that the holiday did not have to be perfect, and once she got that through her thick skull, it was pretty nice. The twins dressed up as characters from their favorite manga stories, which didn’t make sense to her, but they were excited. Trick-or-treating and a haunted house and all that stuff. Happy. Normal.
This year, though? She might not survive.
For once, Tommy is the calm twin. Over the summer, he got really into sports, which isn’t a surprise (his uncle and his Westview incarnation both had superspeed), but she and Vis are most definitely not sports people. They’ve indulged his new obsession, though, since it’s the first thing that has made him genuinely happy and excited. Fortunately, they managed to talk him out of joining the middle school’s intramural touch football and wrestling squads (way too dangerous), and Wanda gave her husband a sly look when Tommy announced he was going to try out for track. Since then, he’s spent the hours after school running like hell and working off all that energy, and he comes home to do his homework with an almost zen-like expression on his face. Wanda’s more than happy to spend a bit too much money on a replica United States Track and Field costume for Halloween.
Billy, though? Wow. Over the past year and a half, he’d always been calm. The therapist said that he seemed remarkably well-adjusted to the massive change in his life. He joined the chess and Dungeons & Dragons clubs at school, and he’s made a handful of friends. At their Labor Day picnic, Vision held her hand as they watched the twins sail remote-controlled boats at the pond in Prospect Park, and he murmured, “I’ll admit I’ve had my concerns about Thomas, but William does appear to be doing quite swimmingly.” And he winked at his own pun.
About that….
The lead-up to Halloween seems to have triggered something inside that enigmatic mind of his. Their placid, well-adjusted son is suddenly full of wild mood swings and fits of pique. (Vision’s description, which she’d had to get him to explain to her.) Instead of hanging out in the living room binge-watching TV with her – one of their bonding activities – he disappears into his bedroom and sulks. And Wanda has absolutely no idea what on earth to do about it.
On the evening of October 21st, he grabs his dinner off the table and once again disappears into his room. Wanda glares at the closed door, but oh-so-wise Vision murmurs, “Let him be.”
Tommy just rolls his eyes and says, “If he keeps doing that, the two of us are going to need our own rooms.”
Wanda snarks back, “Good luck finding a three-bedroom apartment that we can afford.”
Instead of laughter, that earns her a look from Vis, while Tommy’s face falls. Shit. Probably thinks she’s blaming their new family for the money issue. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”
They finish dinner, and Tommy heads out onto the fire escape for another marathon texting session with his friends. She knows Vision is going to want to have another talk about all this, but she’s really not in the mood. Time to be A Good Mom, so she knocks on Billy’s door and, when there’s no answer, opens it.
To her surprise, he doesn’t seem angry. In fact, he looks up from his phone with a smile. She doesn’t have a ton of experience with thirteen-year-old boys, but she can sense an ulterior motive behind his supposed good mood. “Hey, Mom?”
“Yeah?” (She still gets butterflies in her stomach when he calls her that.)
“My friend Teddy invited me to go with him and his mom to their cabin upstate for Halloween. Can I go?”
Crap. What’s the Good Mom reply to that? “We haven’t met your friend or his mother yet, so that might not be the best idea.”
“It’ll be okay! Totally safe, I promise.”
“Um, well, let me talk to your father, but….”
Though the twins haven’t evinced any superpowers yet, the pulse of heat and energy that shoots through the room seems to prove that, yup, Billy has inherited a certain something from his mother. And if that weren’t proof enough, his eyes briefly glow red. “I knew you’d say no,” he growls. His voice hasn’t quite changed yet, and it’d be funny if she weren’t starting to panic.
Okay, how the hell is she supposed to respond to such ridiculous overreaction? Keeping her voice as steady as possible, she replies, “I didn’t say that.”
Then he deals the worst possible blow. “I hate you!”
As Wanda feels her soul fall apart, he flies out of the room, the apartment door slamming behind him. Not super-speed. Just the rage of an adolescent throwing a tantrum she’d never thought he was capable of, but apparently she was wrong.
Vision appears at the bedroom door, and she wants to sink into the floor, all the way down, just like all those years ago when she did that to him – fuck, don’t think about that now. But she can’t think of anything except that Billy says he hates her and he’s gone and she doesn’t know what to do.
Of course her husband’s white face is perfectly calm, though he does have that crease between his eyebrows. “What happened?”
She sputters, “He asked to go somewhere with his friend, and I said you and I would have to talk about it, and then he just –” Yeah, here come the tears, but she blinks them away.
“Ah.” He walks over to place his hand on her shoulder, and it makes her feel both better and so much worse. “I suspect he won’t have gone far. Shall I go find him?”
Chin up. Be a good mom, or at least not a complete failure of a mom. “No, I should do it.”
He nods and kisses the crown of her head. When she walks back out into the living room, Tommy is staring at them through the window. He looks worried, but then he hunches over and buries his face back in his phone.
Another deep breath, and she heads down the two flights of stairs to the apartment building’s main door. Sure enough, there’s Billy, sitting on the stoop. Carefully, so carefully, she takes a seat next to him. He doesn’t flinch away. That’s a good sign, right? They sit there for a few minutes, their breathing syncing up, and Wanda can feel those emotions coming off him in waves. The same way they used to come off her, and still do when her feelings get the better of her. (She’s come so far since, um, that time with the Darkhold, but she cannot let herself remember that right now.) There are so many conversations they need to have – the sudden tantrum, the possibility that he might have powers, the emotions overwhelming him – but she forces herself to wait for him to open up.
“I’m sorry,” he finally whispers.
She immediately says, “It’s alright.” (She remembers another conversation in Westview about a dog and emotions and no, not now.)
“I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
Wanda takes the risk of placing her hand on his knee. “I could never be mad at you, Billy. I love you so, so much.”
When he turns to look at her, his eyes are bright and damp and blue instead of red, but she knows it’s still there underneath. He’s her son, after all. And he whispers, “Wait, you love me?”
Her heart breaks.
“Oh, sweetie. I’ve always loved you. Even before I met you.”
His lips quiver, as if he can’t decide whether to smile or cry. “Sorry. That was stupid. I know you and dad love me. I just… shit.”
Trying to ease the mood a bit, she lightly elbows him. “Cursing? That’s not the Billy I know.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
That should make her feel sadder, but it doesn’t. “Want to tell me some of it?”
He looks away, as if debating the prospect, then says, “Not now, but maybe someday.”
“Okay.”
Another moment of silence, but it feels warmer now. “So… tell me about this boy you want to hang out with. Teddy, right?”
“Yeah. He’s just a guy I know. No big deal.” But there’s a new pulse of emotion filling the air around them, and she can recognize exactly what it is.
Oh.
So that’s it.
Wanda bites her lip to keep from grinning. Maybe he’s only been in her life for sixteen months, but it still feels like her baby boy is growing up. She wants to ask him if he likes this Teddy, if he has a crush, if he feels that same flutter of butterflies in his belly when he thinks of him, the way she still does when she looks at Vision. But she’s read so many books about being A Good Mom, and they all say not to push, to let your son open up to you when he’s ready. So, even though she’s wildly curious, she drapes her arm around his shoulders and offers, “How about this? Before you go anywhere with Teddy and his mom, your father and I need to meet them, okay? Why not invite them over for dinner this weekend?”
He frowns. “You mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He leans into her, and everything feels alright again. When he says, “I love you, mom,” her whole body feels like it’s flying. And she thinks that she might not be The Perfect Mother yet, but she’s getting there. Slowly but surely.
“Love you too, billygoat.”
*****