Chapter 3
They explained to Wanda what circumstances led to Peter Two and Three ending up stuck in this universe as best as they could, followed by what had happened in the alley with the witch. Wanda listened with unbroken focus, taking in every detail and barely reacting to the story, she was probably trying to make sense of the situation.
“So…” started the redhead after they had finished their tale. “You went to Doctor Strange asking for help, messed up a spell that brought villains and counterparts from other universes into this one, and then cured them?” Peter nodded and she continued. “Then, the multiverse was breaking, so you had Strange make everyone forget about you, and then the spell to return everyone to their right universes didn't work on Peter Two and Three?”
Peter nodded again. “Pretty much.”
She pressed her lips together and her brow furrowed in concentration. “I think they weren’t sent back because of the forgetting spell. If Peter Parker doesn’t exist, he doesn’t need to be returned to his universe.”
“Oh,” he said. “I actually never thought about that.”
“Wait,” interrupted Peter Two. “Does that— Does that mean that if we get back to our universes, no one will remember us?”
That… that was something he had actually never considered a possibility. He had assumed that Doctor Strange would have made it so the spell only affected his own universe, they all had, but then again, they’d been in the heat of the moment. To make sure that the multiverse threats didn’t cross over, wouldn’t they have to forget about Peter Parker too? And if they forgot, it only made sense that all universes forgot too. Had he really cursed his multiverse brothers to the same fate he had chosen for himself?
“... I don’t know,” sheepishly answered Wanda. “Maybe.”
A look of horror passed on Peter Two’s face but he quickly shook it off for one of determination. “Never mind that, we need to focus on Peter Three.”
“Right,” nodded the sorceress before turning to him. “I’m really sorry, but I need to see everything that happened with the witch, you might have missed some important details that could help us.”
An unpleasant shiver went down his spine as he realized what that meant. Having his memories extracted and examined was painful enough, he didn’t exactly want to go through it a second time. However, he couldn’t say no, especially if there was a chance to find clues about Peter Three’s whereabouts.
Peter took a deep breath before answering. “Go ahead.”
The redhead gently put her glowing fingers on his temple and he was immediately thrown back into yesterday. Thankfully, Wanda was a lot more careful in her viewing, and once she was done, Peter didn’t feel like he’d been hit by a bus. His heart was still racing like crazy, though.
“Hm,” said the woman. “I know I’ve seen that symbol somewhere before.”
A book materialized in her hands, it looked old and very, very cursed. The sorceress looked through the pages without even touching them, to both his and Peter Two’s fascination. He had never seen a real spellbook and he was willing to bet that it was the same for his counterpart. At last, it stopped on a page with a drawing of the same symbol with a bunch of writing he couldn’t understand. A tense silence grew between them as Wanda read through the page, her little ‘hmph’ and ‘tsk’ only worsened their stress levels.
Finally, she looked up from the book, though her expression foreboded nothing good. “That symbol is used for a shifting spell, it transports the victim to another world. The tricky thing is that it doesn’t just send them somewhere else, a displacement spell is much less trouble than this, no this is used to… feed on someone’s life force.”
Peter gasped loudly at that, his eyes wide in horror and his stomach twisted uncomfortably.
“Why him though?” asked Peter Two, earning him a puzzled look from Wanda. “I mean, she already had One in her grasp, wouldn’t it have been easier to do it while he was incapacitated? Instead, she specifically waited for Three to show up.”
The redhead grimaced at his question. “The spell doesn’t really send someone to an alternate universe or anything like that, it sends them to a place in between everything. It’s a little hard to explain but it basically takes everything the person wants and creates a scenario that feels real to them, it ensures that the person won’t fight back. As for why him, from what she said, she’d been watching your friend for a long time and she mentioned that your suffering would have been sufficient had you not been helped. My theory is that she wanted the one with the most unresolved trauma since he was less likely to fight back.”
“Can you help us find him?”
Wanda opened her mouth, but she hesitated to answer, her eyes suddenly looking unsure. “I don’t— I can’t draw attention to myself, I’ve made mistakes and I can’t have the Sorcerer Supreme on my trail.”
“You’re talking about Westview,” commented Peter Two. “If it’s any comfort, I don’t think you’re the villain. From what Peter told me and my own conclusion upon meeting you, I think you suffered a lot of loss, and you reached your limits. The fact that I can see that you regret your actions just goes to show that you know you made a mistake.”
While the older man’s speech seemed to help her, he could see that it wasn’t enough. “I swore I wouldn’t hurt any more people,” sighed the woman. “I’d need to search through so many worlds, I don’t know if I could stop myself if I saw—”
“Wanda, please,” he begged. “He’s our brother, we only have each other left. Please, help us.”
Although it seemed impossible, her eyes grew even wider at his plea. She seemed to go through a thousand emotions as she stared at him in stunned silence. He wasn’t sure what triggered that reaction, but it became clear when she finally found her voice.
“I’ll help you both,” she said with glassy eyes and a hint of pain in her voice. “Because family is forever, it’s the most important thing in the world.”
Her voice cracked at the end of her sentence and Peter instantly thought of the few accounts of people saying that Wanda had children in Westview. Boys that aged ten years over the span of three days, boys that were never identified as real people; boys that were rumored to be nothing but an extent of Wanda’s magic. Despite the numerous attempts to villainize her, Peter could see how tired she seemed, she had lost so much, and what had happened in New Jersey was probably nothing more than a desperate attempt to live normally after so much trauma and loss. He could understand why she had done it, he probably would have done the same had he been as powerful as she was.
Quietly, Wanda sat in the middle of the living room, checking her surroundings before nodding her head with determination. “I’ll need space, and quiet. This could take a long time. I’ll also need things belonging to Peter Three, it’ll help me find him.”
“I’ll go,” declared Peter Two. “Is there anything in particular you need?”
Wanda read another page of the book before answering. “Not really, I just need a few things that he’s attached to.”
The older man nodded and headed off to the third man’s room, leaving him and Wanda alone as she prepared for the ritual. Peter watched as she conjured candles and various things he didn’t know the name of. The redhead then morphed her casual clothes to a structured scarlet armor with a crown headpiece on her forehead.
“I like the new getup,” he complimented. “Very badass.”
Wanda’s face lit up at his remark and the permanent crease of her brow lessened slightly. “Thank you. It somehow feels right? Like this was always what I was meant to become; the Scarlet Witch.”
“Flashy name,” he teased her. “But again, a badass choice.”
Peter Two came back into the room holding Peter Three’s favorite shirt and one of the pictures he had taken of the three of them. It was one taken by him on an afternoon when they had all gone out together to celebrate him passing his GED exams. Three had told them it was one of the rare days where he truly felt happy, with no strings attached.
“Is that enough?” he asked as he handed the items to Wanda. “We don’t have a lot of stuff so that’s all I could find.”
“It’s alright, I’ll manage,” smiled the sorceress before rubbing her hands together. “Now, let’s get started.”