It wasn't as simple as turning back the clock, no matter how many times someone suggested a variation on just that task. Time unwound couldn't simply be spooled back up again and those five years spent would remain spent, along with all the lessons they'd taught and all the decisions made therein.
Those in the ether wouldn't have felt those five years pass, just as there was no way to wind that time up again, there was no way to unwind time at all in that world between worlds. There were also bound to be some logistical hurdles and complications along the way, but in the end it didn't matter. All that mattered was that those who had been lost in the snap would be returned, and as the world had healed from their loss, it could heal again from their return.
Somehow, Wanda had gotten herself tangled up with Strange and the Mystics -Masters Of The Mystic Arts was simply too much of a mouthful to use every single time, plus, it made Wong scowl at her, and also at Strange for chuckling at it whenever she said it- in bringing people home. Strange and the Mystics could open portal to draw people back from the ether, and Wanda could essentially play five-year historian for groups of them at a time, catching them up on what had happened in a matter of minutes in real-time, but a couple of hours of reality warp distortion.
It was exhausting, though, and only used for people who truly couldn't wrap their minds around it, which was still fair few of the returnees. It was difficult work, and more than one joke had been made about the metaphysical DMV, but at the end of every day, no matter where they'd been bringing people in physically, Strange returned her to the Barton homestead, and sometimes -like that evening- well and away from the front door, but it was nice enough out and she didn't mind the walk, just trudging her way up the gravel drive to the house.
Dying was meant to be it. The end. And as a general rule, it was. Except when it wasn’t. And it’s always a very jarring situation on the revival end of things. Especially when it meant remembering dying. That shouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. Can’t.
But here he is anyway, despite it all.
He’s sat on the front porch of some out of the way house he doesn’t know or recognize. The place that the wizard had decided he should be. Wait here, he had said, your sister will be here.
So far, that seems not to have been true. Pietro has looked through every inch of the house at least two dozen times. No sign of her anywhere inside it, though there is no denying there are traces of her in the house.
Wanda’s things are still not actually Wanda, and his impatience grows the longer the wait stretches on.
Until—
There, in the distance, someone is coming. Pietro watches the easy, non-hurried steps and aches to go meet her. But it would be better to let her find him, so he tamps the urge down and waits for her to reach the front steps, where he’s been perched for awhile now.
For the last few yards she'd been trying to sort out the sense of familiarity she'd been feeling against the back of her mind, and had, ultimately, decided that she was just tired and it was the sense of familiarity that being on the property always brought. It was the first place that had actually almost felt like home, and even though she was the only one there at the moment -they still hadn't managed to bring the Bartons back through from the Between, and Clint was still off doing his vigilante thing- but that voice, that one word was enough to have her freezing in her tracks.
For a moment it felt like gravity had shifted. Like the world had tilted off its axis again the way it had when she'd first felt him die. She had long since stopped poking at that empty space in the back of her mind and the periphery of her senses where he'd always been. A gap that had been like a lost tooth for too long, something that she'd finally learned to live with and work around.
The freeze was only momentary, barely more than a heartbeat before she practically dove forward, dragging him bodily into a hug, face buried against his shoulder in a vain attempt to keep herself from crying and it took a minute to unstick her voice from where it had lodged the back of her throat, "Where have you been?"
His heart is in the wrong place, stuck in his throat as he watches a dozen or three different emotions play across his sister’s face in that agonizingly long moment before she leapt toward him, crushing him in the tightest hug he thinks she could manage.
“You know,” he murmurs softly into her hair, not answering her question any further than that. He still doesn’t understand being here. Standing in front of her. Whole and alive.
He clings to her tightly, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “It is so good to see you,” he mutters quietly.
She did know, that was maybe the worst part, that she knew this was something she should probably be suspicious of, or at least wary, but she wasn't.
She couldn't be, not when he felt right, like himself, and if there was something out there that could fool her senses -or her mind- that thoroughly then it deserved to take her down, because she definitely didn't have any kind of defense against that.
All she managed was an equally quiet: "Missed you. So much." It was going to take a moment to actually get her equilibrium back and invite him in, reasonably sure he'd forgive her for not doing so immediately.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2022-08-03 03:21 am (UTC)Those in the ether wouldn't have felt those five years pass, just as there was no way to wind that time up again, there was no way to unwind time at all in that world between worlds. There were also bound to be some logistical hurdles and complications along the way, but in the end it didn't matter. All that mattered was that those who had been lost in the snap would be returned, and as the world had healed from their loss, it could heal again from their return.
Somehow, Wanda had gotten herself tangled up with Strange and the Mystics -Masters Of The Mystic Arts was simply too much of a mouthful to use every single time, plus, it made Wong scowl at her, and also at Strange for chuckling at it whenever she said it- in bringing people home. Strange and the Mystics could open portal to draw people back from the ether, and Wanda could essentially play five-year historian for groups of them at a time, catching them up on what had happened in a matter of minutes in real-time, but a couple of hours of reality warp distortion.
It was exhausting, though, and only used for people who truly couldn't wrap their minds around it, which was still fair few of the returnees. It was difficult work, and more than one joke had been made about the metaphysical DMV, but at the end of every day, no matter where they'd been bringing people in physically, Strange returned her to the Barton homestead, and sometimes -like that evening- well and away from the front door, but it was nice enough out and she didn't mind the walk, just trudging her way up the gravel drive to the house.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-08 08:35 pm (UTC)But here he is anyway, despite it all.
He’s sat on the front porch of some out of the way house he doesn’t know or recognize. The place that the wizard had decided he should be. Wait here, he had said, your sister will be here.
So far, that seems not to have been true. Pietro has looked through every inch of the house at least two dozen times. No sign of her anywhere inside it, though there is no denying there are traces of her in the house.
Wanda’s things are still not actually Wanda, and his impatience grows the longer the wait stretches on.
Until—
There, in the distance, someone is coming. Pietro watches the easy, non-hurried steps and aches to go meet her. But it would be better to let her find him, so he tamps the urge down and waits for her to reach the front steps, where he’s been perched for awhile now.
“Sestra…”
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 10:56 pm (UTC)For a moment it felt like gravity had shifted. Like the world had tilted off its axis again the way it had when she'd first felt him die. She had long since stopped poking at that empty space in the back of her mind and the periphery of her senses where he'd always been. A gap that had been like a lost tooth for too long, something that she'd finally learned to live with and work around.
The freeze was only momentary, barely more than a heartbeat before she practically dove forward, dragging him bodily into a hug, face buried against his shoulder in a vain attempt to keep herself from crying and it took a minute to unstick her voice from where it had lodged the back of her throat, "Where have you been?"
no subject
Date: 2022-09-22 11:15 pm (UTC)“You know,” he murmurs softly into her hair, not answering her question any further than that. He still doesn’t understand being here. Standing in front of her. Whole and alive.
He clings to her tightly, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “It is so good to see you,” he mutters quietly.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-25 01:47 am (UTC)She couldn't be, not when he felt right, like himself, and if there was something out there that could fool her senses -or her mind- that thoroughly then it deserved to take her down, because she definitely didn't have any kind of defense against that.
All she managed was an equally quiet: "Missed you. So much." It was going to take a moment to actually get her equilibrium back and invite him in, reasonably sure he'd forgive her for not doing so immediately.