It’s a difficult line to walk for the both of them, an alienating cognitive disjoint at the sight of her standing here in this library as if everything’s normal, as if they weren’t trying to kill each other within such recent memory. Because on the one hand, there’s the comfort of a familiar face, someone he had respected and liked and considered a comrade, a friend, a ghost from home —

but then, too, that same face had hunted and haunted him across universes, and now she’s here. If Stephen closes his eyes, he can still see that streak of blood across Wanda’s face, that fiery red glow in her eyes, burning in her fingertips, reaching out to stop his heart. It had been like having a feral animal on his heels, a fairytale monster (a witch) clawing its way out of the mirror prison he’d tried to shove her into.

Sometimes Stephen still had nightmares about it.

“A couple months,” he answers. Enough time to be out of his quarantine, to go on a couple out-of-town trips for official Riftwatch business, to start finding his place in the organisation and realms of expertise where he can be of use.

But not long enough for it to be a home.

And he’s still looking at her, as if he’s still afraid to take his eyes off her for a second. They all knew what she’d been able to do with an unattended second. And— fuck it, but he’s tired, and he doesn’t have the patience for this part of it, dancing polite circles around each other.

“Are we going to be a problem, Wanda?” Stephen asks bluntly. “You and I.”