5109/From Your Head to Your Toes

From Your Head to Your Toes
Date of Scene:	05 August 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Wanda starts the tentative process of getting to know her sons, starting with Tommy. In which she explains why here must remain his home, and that he has the best father in all the worlds.
Cast of Characters:	Scarlet Witch, Speed

---

Scarlet Witch has posed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCgDgJsTR_w

Time had passed faster than Wanda had intended - mostly out of her own confusion about how to handle the matter.. And then there was Vision who did not seem to be weathering.. something.. well. Then the spores had shown up, with the attendant chaos.. Before she knew it, weeks had passed without Wanda contacting either of her sons.

The longer it went on, the harder it became to make herself do it, until she knew that the only way it was going to happen is if she just did it without thinking. Without preparing. Without knowing what it was she was going to say or do..

So it is that Wanda ports to Tommy's location, finding him at the lake on Xavier's property, watching her son while she gathers the courage to let him know she's here.

Speed has posed:
Tommy was restless. Shocker right? Xavier's was painfully slow when there were classes on, now that it was summer, it was deadly boring. Still, it was better than the streets and so Tommy had resoved to make the best of it. So, when Wanda finds him, he's sitting crosslegged on a rock by the water, eyes closed and breathing deeply in and out, in and out. Trying some of the exercises they'd taught him her to rein in the anxiousness brought about by his rapid-fire thoughts.

Despite his meditation's he's dressed to impress, new jeans, an untucked button down and a pair of new sneakers, because this was Xaviers and graduate or not social warfare remained a thing.

He doesn't hear Wanda's arrival.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
Wanda hadn't meant to be silent, even if she normally was. It wasn't a conscious thing; it was merely an aspect of her. One moment here. The next there. Always as if she'd always been in the second location, not having just appeared there.

It pains her to watch her son. To consider all the moments with him, and his brother, that she'd missed. There's a portion of her that is aware of the dichotomy of things - how it both was and wasn't her responsible for him. How she both could and could not have mothered him - the Wanda who had given life to him would be still years in her future away if she'd not sent the boys to safety in this Wanda's present.

She wondered if she'd have known them if they'd crossed paths in her youth. And even then has a twinge of sorrow at knowing the Wanda who had sent them here had made certain that would never come to pass.

Finally, she takes a step forward, allowing her footsteps to create the barest rustle of sound, that the boy might hear her.

"I did never have a place like this when I was younger. I wonder what it would have been like."

Speed has posed:
The words startle Tommy out of his meditations. One moment he's on the rock, the next he's standing up beside it facing Wanda, hands up defensively.

They lower quickly when he sees who it was.

"Yeah?" he asks looking for some sort of quip but realizing he didn't know much at all about his mother or where she came from other than, he guessed by the accent Eastern Europe was a part of it. "I didn't have it either until I got here, lived in a crappy place in Jersey."

He looks down at his hands for a moment. Unsure what to do with himself and this sudden visitor. "Um, so, what's up?" he asks looking up.

He'd found it easy to call Wanda 'mom' when talking to Billy, but now, face to face, it felt strange on his lips and so, goes unsaid.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
Wanda nods slowly, looking pained.

"Peitro and I, we did not see such things when we were children either. It was not a good time. The minds, they are very small in the corner of the world where we were children. It was not until your grandfather found us that things were different."

Her shoulders rise and fall in an easy, and apologetic shrug.

"First, it is I am sorry this conversation is so late to come. I have been..Mmm, how do you say? Afraid?"

And it seems she truly has been afraid. There are small telltale signs about her, including the faint tremulo to her voice, and the slight tremor of her body, as though she were looking for all the ways to escape.

Speed has posed:
Tommy could read the fear well enough. Oh, he wasn't telepathic, just a bit of a scam artist and reading a mark was part of the game. Though, here, he didn't see an 'in' or a weakness to be exploited, he felt... sad.

He glances back at the lake, watching how the afternoon sun reflected on the surface. His gaze lingers a second or two before he turns back, "Do you want to join me?" he asks, nodding to the stone he'd been sitting on before. "I mean to look, not to meditate."

Clearly, he's more than a little nervous too. "People are like that everywhere," he says. "I was right here in America when people were running experiments on me, so not surprised you ran into grief. Glad had grandfather watching your back."

As to being afraid, Tommy's green eyes shoot downwards, "I get it, must be a big shock to suddenly be a Mom," he says. He looks back up and offers a sympathetic look.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
The 'in' is welcomed by the young woman, who moves closer, nodding as she does so.

"They did see Pietro and I as a threat. It was like the history books, yes? If we were not like the rest of them, then we were to be feared. They did wish to harm us." Her fear of the moment is replaced with a regretful demeanour, voice lowering as she joins her son. "It was perhaps the first time I did realize what I could do. What I could be. I was very angry for a long time. We both were. Papa - your grandfather - he did not come for much time still. We were still very young then. Still so very alone."

She sits, finding a spot on the beachfront near where he himself had been, letting Tommy choose how close to sit near her.

"It was very much a surprise to meet you, yes. Both you and your brother. I do not know how to explain it, except to say I did not have memories of you until I did meet you. And even then, it was to learn that I did do this in another reality."

He's given a weak smile. "It is complicated. But I can try to explain better if you wish. Or not. It is only that I thought you deserved some explanation for your childhood."

Speed has posed:
Tommy nods, taking a seat on the rock half-an-arm's length from Wanda, an eye kept out for attempts to hug him. "So what happened? Lynch mob? Tortches and pitchforks? Me I got all the 'mutie' static at school until I got put in the lab and realized the humans don't see us as people."

As for alone and angry he doesn't mention it but his look shows he knows that feeling all too well.

"Escaped though," he says of the lab.

Tommy turns looking suspicious. "How's that work? Just rememebring when you meet me. Like you had no idea I was out there?"

Scarlet Witch has posed:
Wanda doesn't try and whitewash it. "It was about that, yes. They did think if perhaps they did sacrifice us, then things would be okay. It was, they thought, that we did cause the hardships. And.." she has to admit, "Perhaps we did cause some. We were young, and new to our powers. We did not know so much. So much anger then, too. It did make things happen."

That, and Pietro was a master of manipulation even then. Wanda wasn't always certain, now, when she looked back upon the matter, that he wasn't in more control of things than he admitted at the time. In so many ways, Pietro was much older than she was, despite them being twins.

She smiles then, almost, when he asks how it worked, the matter of meeting him.

"It was very much like that, yes. Once I did see you, it was like a memory opening up in my mind, and I knew of how it was to be the Wanda who it was who made you. It took a tiny bit to absorb it all, so now I do have to think some to separate how it is that she is both me and not me, but that is mostly how it was. Until I saw you, I was not that Wanda."

Speed has posed:
"Assholes," Tommy says of the people back where his mother came from. "Where'd all this happen anyhow? I mean, where are you and Pietro from?" And by extention him. "Totally want to avoid that place by the sound of it."

As for anger 'making things happen' he glances down at his hands. "I know how that can be. Do you know about my past? What I've done?"

The rest leaves Tommy tilting his head. "I'm not sure I follow. I mean if it was anyone else, I'd call bullshit on just 'remembering' when you saw me but..." he frowns. "Really I should have called bullshit on the whole story. You don't just suddenly find out your royalty during a day in the park, but when you told me, told all of us, it felt, I dunno, right? Like I knew it but didn't. Is that what you mean?"

Scarlet Witch has posed:
Wanda tells her son, "Transia. Only it was not so much there that this happened. It is complicated. We were not with my Papa. I do not remember my mother so much as she found me later in life. We did roam.. we were.. Romani? Only, well, things happen, yes? I do not remember the name of the place that we did burn. I do not like to have that memory."

Only she does not purge it, leaving it a lesson to herself in what she could become ever so easily.

"I am.. not so much like other mutants, Tommy. It is a little bit that I can do things that nobody can think of. This thing, these realities? They are not so much a boundary for me, as different thoughts? Mmm, maybe that is the wrong word, but close."

Wanda tries to explain. "This place, this place we live and call earth is not the only place that there is. It is also not the only when or where that there is. In another time and place there is a Wanda who fell very much in love with a man and wished to give him children. Only when she did create them, she saw that what she had done could be so easily used to do terrible things like those memories you have of your childhood, only on those who are not mutants like us."

Her brow furrows ever so slightly as she regards the young man to see if he follows.

"She - I - did not wish that to happen. We did wish you to have the choice of how to be Tommy, not to have Tommy be put upon you. I do not know. I think it was meant well, but I see you, and I see all the ways it went wrong."

Speed has posed:
"Romani?" Tommy had heard the word before. "You mean we're Gypsies?" there's none of revulsion that Wanda might have heard with that name before, but more curiosity and a touch of wonder.

The rest, worlds, boundries and that sort of thing makes him feel like he's back in Professor McCoy's class, but slowly he seems to get it.

"Wait so there are a bunch of different worlds and I'm from one of them, where another you just created me out of thin air?" he asks. "As for the rest, not sure if I follow, do you mean that when I was made she made all of me, my past, my personality, the whole thing?" he asks not quite following the bit about not having Tommy put upon him.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
"Romani," Wanda corrects gently. "Gypsy is a slur. And I do not know exactly what we are. It is not entirely certain. There are some inconsistencies in who and what we are. But you are mine."

Wanda first looks to the boy, then out over the water, taking in the lake and the lowering sun. Letting it be a focus where the conversation turns difficult.

"Not thin air, no. You were created out of want and love. There were bits of you that were taken from me and made to be more. It is more like you are my will manifest." Which sounds a whole lot like she just said he was created out of thin air.

A soft laugh ensues, though, and Wanda smiles at the memories she has of his, and Billy's, creation. "No, you were not created with your past and personality and present set in stone. You are as much the same as any child. Made out of, well, perhaps not all are made out of love, but you were, and then you were allowed to become whatever it was that that love made you."

Here she sighs, and regret colours her voice, "I do not know, Tommy. It was maybe a mistake to send you away. I can not say who or what you would have been if she, if we, had not done that. I only know it was meant with the best of intentions."

Much like her own origins had started out of. But also like so many such things, things had gone terribly wrong along the way -- or perhaps terribly right. Perhaps another Wanda would not see the horrors that her powers could create should she merely give in to them at a whim, even in the face of trying to do what was right, or better. Not all things, Wanda knew, should be done merely because you could do them.

Speed has posed:
"Oh, sorry," Tommy says about the slur, committing the name Romani to memory. For someone who had been on his own for so long it felt good to belong to something even tangentally.

He turns when she says he's hers. His heart skipped but he quashed it down quickly. That way led to disapointment. Though for a moment the words felt good.

There is a snort from Tommy. "Maybe I'm missing something because I can't make things out of will but it sounds like thin air to me."

He turns, offering a small smile at the remark.

"Don't mind if that's how it was, I mean, who can say they were you know, created."

There's a look of relief when she tells him, the important bits of him were him and not something made by the other Wanda. "Good," he says.

"So, these other worlds, like the one I came from, are they better than this one?" it provided a tempting prospect, much like Genosha did.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
"No. Not better. Different," Wanda says after some thought. He might be able to tell that she's actually (or seems to be) contemplating the realities she knows in order to give him the most truthful answer to that. "But you are bound to this one now, regardless. It is not a thing to so easily travel between the two."

She could do it if she put her mind to it. And certainly the Wanda who had created them had sent them between. But generally such things were bad to do, and left behind ripples that were unpleasant to all realities. It was not a thing Wanda would do lightly, and it informed how desperate the other Wanda must have been in her reality to take such measures.

Wanda laughs softly at Tommy's snort. "You can not create things out of will because that is not who you are, Tommy. You are a very different creature than your mother. Or even your father. And I, in turn, am very different from you. That is always the beautiful thing about what we create, and the beings that we are. We are no two alike, even if we come from the very same."

His skip of heart is noticed, but not commented on. It is a small thing - a good thing - but she is still wary of being too much, too soon, for the boy.

Speed has posed:
"Any ones where Mutants are the majority? That one might be worth the effort," Tommy remarks only half-joking. Though it does strike him how much work went into sending him here if that was the case. His lips quirk into a frown, as he wonders is this world /was/ the best one which is why he was sent here. That was a sad thought.

He keeps the thought to himself, but his rumination is plainly readable on his face.

He shakes it off quickly, much like his uncle, his moods were as quick as his feet.

"Huh," he says about being different than his mother and father... wait.

"Wait, my father, who is he?" he asks suddenly seizing on the idea. Until now it hadn't really come to mind. The question is a wary one. He'd lucked out with his mother, brother and grandfather he wasn't enjoying the idea of rolling the family dice again. He was owed a pair of snake eyes by this point.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
There's a very, VERY, serious look from Wanda, even if the boy is only half-joking. "Tommy, it is not a thing that would be allowed. It is a thing that could have had repercutions that harmed us all, that you were sent here in the first place. You will not be allowed to go to another. This is your reality now. You are part of the fabric of this existence. You would be out of sync? Yes? Out of sync with another."

She sighs.

"You do not understand. The reality you are from? It is here. It is existing where we are, exactly now, at this moment. All the realities of you are. All the realities that are, are here. This is how I mean that you can not be else where, that you are keyed to this one. Without you here, this reality could cease to exist. You are part of the story of it, and what makes it whole. You existing, believing in your existence, are part of what makes reality real?"

Her serious look gentles some, Wanda sparing a softness for her son. "Do you understand?"

For the moment not answering about his father.

Speed has posed:
Whoosh. Most of that flies right over the speedster's head. His brow furrows trying to grasp the strands of what Wanda was saying and weave it into something he can understand, but in the end only one part resonates, and that's no, it isn't possible.

"So, if I go, this universe is missing a piece and wherever I end up will have one too many?" he asks. Okay, maybe he got some of it. "And that'd mess everything else up?"

He wasn't sure that wouldn't be worth it and it comes through in his tone.

As for his father, he frowns, crossing his arms, "Figured he was bad news. It's okay, I don't want to know." It was a lie.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
Wanda can see where the threads of who and what she are bypass what the boy (and most) can follow, but his partial grasp is enough.

"Very much that, yes," she agrees. Adding, "And I would miss you."

Though when Tommy speaks of his father in that dismissive way, Wanda shakes her head. "Oh, nonono. Your father. Oh Tommy. He is perhaps the best person I do know. You should be so very happy and proud to have such a father. Only he did only just learn of you and.. some of the story is not mine to tell, Tommy. It is best a discussion that we have together with him. Or perhaps even only you with your father. But he is not bad news. He is all the best of news."

Speed has posed:
The idea that someone would miss him sets Tommy to blinking. "Uh, right," he says not rejecting the idea so much as needing time to process it.

Tommy frowns, "The very best of news?" he asks his mind tumbling through the options of who his father might be. "And he's here?" he asks. "On this world?"

He turns over options. "Is he an Avenger? Oh god, is he Cap? He's totally Cap isn't he?" I mean who else on the roster would qualify as the 'very best of news'? Certainly not Stark!

Scarlet Witch has posed:
"He.. is here, yes. Though he is also there. But yes, an Avenger." Wanda laughs, smiling at her son. "No, he is not Cap. But I have met Cap as you say, and he is a good man, too. No, your father is someone else."

Wanda gets up, and offers her hand. "We will meet him. Not today, but soon, I promise. Today, though, we spend time together, you and I. It is good to have a son. Two sons. And I would like to get to know you better."