Rather than tense up further, something in him actually relaxes as she acknowledges it. Because let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s call this what it is.
He might have recused himself and ask someone else to do this intake interview with her, but he needed to come here. Needed to see her with his own eyes, test the waters, see what they were going to be working with. Is it better or worse that Tony isn’t here anymore, either?
He’d like to think that this, at least, is the smallest silver lining of Tony’s absence. Stephen’s a disaster, but at least it just means one match on the gasoline rather than two.
“None of us chose to come here,” he says. Rifters. Those with these anchors buried in their hands. Dreams made flesh. Which might not always have been a given; what with America Chavez ripping her way through universes, theoretically there’s the chance that he had come here differently, walking in through the stage door rather than the front.
He breathes out. He’s still clutching a stack of papers, his own lifeline and shield where she’s still holding the book; the two of them are such echoes of each other sometimes, reflections seen through a mirror darkly.
“I thought you were dead on Mount Wundagore,” he says. “And truly, Wanda, I’m glad that that’s not the case.”
There’s complications, a Gordian knot to still be unraveled here, that churning sickening guilt and grief in his chest whenever he looks at her, but he can at least say that part honestly. He had wanted her to stop, but he hadn’t ever wanted her to die. He had tried to reach out — Wanda, you are justifiably angry. You had to make terrible sacrifices — but it was too little, too late at the time. And he’s been kicking himself for it ever since.
no subject
He might have recused himself and ask someone else to do this intake interview with her, but he needed to come here. Needed to see her with his own eyes, test the waters, see what they were going to be working with. Is it better or worse that Tony isn’t here anymore, either?
He’d like to think that this, at least, is the smallest silver lining of Tony’s absence. Stephen’s a disaster, but at least it just means one match on the gasoline rather than two.
“None of us chose to come here,” he says. Rifters. Those with these anchors buried in their hands. Dreams made flesh. Which might not always have been a given; what with America Chavez ripping her way through universes, theoretically there’s the chance that he had come here differently, walking in through the stage door rather than the front.
He breathes out. He’s still clutching a stack of papers, his own lifeline and shield where she’s still holding the book; the two of them are such echoes of each other sometimes, reflections seen through a mirror darkly.
“I thought you were dead on Mount Wundagore,” he says. “And truly, Wanda, I’m glad that that’s not the case.”
There’s complications, a Gordian knot to still be unraveled here, that churning sickening guilt and grief in his chest whenever he looks at her, but he can at least say that part honestly. He had wanted her to stop, but he hadn’t ever wanted her to die. He had tried to reach out — Wanda, you are justifiably angry. You had to make terrible sacrifices — but it was too little, too late at the time. And he’s been kicking himself for it ever since.