Who: wanda and others When: april & may Where: solvunn, horizon What: catch-all for the month, closed and open prompts within. Warnings: none at the moment, will mark as needed.
[the memory is certainly bruised, because this is the last still moment she remembers before her whole life was upended. it may not have been perfect, it may have been a little lacking, stuffy and cold, but at least there was stability. her mom in the kitchen, sending them off to school, running into them at the store when they returned home, and their dad always home by 7PM—on the dot.
always on time for tv and movie night.]
It was the last time I had a normal life.
[perhaps steve can recall vividly the last time he was — well, not a super soldier.
just steve rogers.
she is appreciative of the hand on her shoulder, but then moves further inside the room, fearless. there is a lot of sadness in her heart, still, but this isn't a memory she cannot revisit. wanda sits on the edge of the bed, kicking up dust in the process.]
Pietro and I found out months after the bombs that our parents were saving up money to fly us to America. We would go to Germany first, then take a plane from there. Passports were being confiscated by the government, so...
[oleg wanted to get it done as soon as he could, to get his family to safety.]
Not that it mattered. It all went up in flames that night. March 30, 1999. [a short nod] Some things are impossible to forget.
[suppressing painful memories is something else entirely; agatha had unlocked that for her. wanda looks up at steve. she knows why he came here, for something they had previously talked about. he wants to learn to use magic, to use it well.
time to break some mental limitations, then. in the same way she had done for matt when she had him create a tennis ball out of thin air.]
You're an artist, Steve. Can you put colors to the room?
[for, right now, it sits in the grayed-out shadows of a room without illumination, the only light coming from the beam of sunshine crossing the threshold of the door they had come in from. perhaps the grayscale is on purpose, at this point.]
You... don't have to force anything. [to think of how angles in a room would allow for his shield to return to him, should he throw it.] You want the walls to be green, so they will be green. That lamp's glow should be a warm orange, so that's what it'll be. See the image clearly in your mind.
[even if he gets one thing colored, one thing illuminated, that's enough of a push forward.
(and he should tell, by her tone, that this is a test so much as an exercise of his control.)]
Of course Steve can't help but dwell on when that had been, for him. Probably before his mom got sick, if he had to put a finer point on it. After that he had been on his own to some degree, despite Bucky's best efforts. Then the war had come, and nothing had really been the same after that.
When Wanda speaks up and fills the dusty, long-abandoned room with silence, it says a lot that Steve doesn't flinch at the sudden shift. He instead squares his shoulders and listens, that same sort of desperate longing for what could have been that he knows all too well himself filling his chest. If he hadn't had to tank the Valkyrie into the sea, what then?
He learned a long time ago there isn't a point in asking, regardless of what his future (his past?) supposedly holds.
Before he can say anything to any of that, though, Wanda presents him with an assignment of sorts. He can tell that this is a test, a part of the lesson he hadn't even realized was starting, just from her tone of voice. It's not so different from how he sounds when he's teaching. ]
... Right. I've got some practice with making my own domain, but— [ Adding details to someone else's, especially when it's something so precious, seems like another task entirely. Steve averts his gaze from Wanda so that he can focus on the room itself, and starts with the colors she mentioned. The walls, green. He closes his eyes and pictures a large paintbrush gliding over the monochrome wall, and when he opens them again the wall has changed — a deep forest green.
The lamp comes to life as well, casting a warm light like a sunset over the room. Then he turns back to Wanda, though it's not to seek approval but to ask a question. ]
But the things we can do in the Horizon aren't quite the same as magic, are they?
[wanda pulls her feet up on the bed, sitting with her legs crossed underneath herself, as she watches as steve goes around adding color and warmth to the room. it definitely changes, and it's not quite so monochromatic anymore.
his question is expected.]
Just now, [she points at her eyes, closing them] you closed your eyes to picture what you wanted to do, didn't you?
[it's a question he can answer for himself. wanda opens her eyes again, looking over at him. without losing eye contact, she has the color of the walls he just painted a deep forest green into a bright orange. it happens almost instantaneously.]
Your newfound source of magic comes from the Singularity, as is the Horizon. If you grow comfortable and confident enough with how you make use of what the Horizon allows, then that will transfer to how you use magic in the real world.
[standing up, a twirl of her left hand has the walls shifting back to that deep forest green he had chosen. wanda stands in front of him, grabs hold of one of his hands with both of her own, but doesn't cover his palm.]
You know what a tennis ball is. Make one appear between our hands.
[ Steve watches as Wanda shifts the color of the walls to an entirely different shade and back again without even needing to think about it. This comes as little surprise to him, though, given the scant information he has of what she'd accomplished in Westview. Wanda's magic is really on a whole other level, and adjusting the Horizon may as well be child's play for her.
He appreciates her patience with him, though, and can only hope that he'd been as patient when he was the one training her. What she's saying makes sense. The Singularity is the source of all magic here, so this plane which is its realm naturally allows for the closest connection with that wellspring.
Steve blinks at Wanda's approach, but doesn't flinch or pull back when she grabs for his hands. There's a trust between them that means he doesn't think twice about it. Despite everything, he's still comfortable in her presence.
A... tennis ball. Right. He can do this. He's messed around in his own domain.
Still, his brow furrows and he works at his bottom lip with his teeth as he focuses. He's handled a tennis ball. He knows the color, the weight, the texture. She's counting down, and at around "two," a tennis ball appears between their hands. ]
There you go, Miss Maximoff.
[ Addressing her as if she's a teacher. Still, he grins at her, relieved that he's been able to complete her assignments so far. ]
[wanda knows that creating a tennis ball for steve is going to be really simple and easy, in theory. it took matt a while to get it right since the last time he had seen one—and not even carefully enough—was when he was eleven or younger. steve gets the color and the fuzzy texture right; even the lines that curl around the ball.
he looks up at his grinning face for a moment, before blinking and looking down at the tennis ball between their hands. she takes it, inspecting it, and a small smile curls upward.
she can already tell what's wrong.
dropping the ball to the floor, it bounces as expected; however, the bounce is shorter than what it could be, and it drops a little flatter after a few more seconds. picking it up, she tosses it from hand to hand before kindly delivering it to one of steve's hands.]
[ Oh no. There's something about that smile, like Wanda knows something he doesn't. Steve watches the sad bounce of the tennis ball when she drops it, and he understands the problem even before she speaks to it. ]
... Huh. Yeah.
[ He turns the ball around in his hands. If anything, he would have worried about the opposite problem, that he'd make it too light because everything feels light to him. Maybe that was just it, though — he'd overcompensated.
He tosses the ball from one hand to the other before setting it down on a nearby side table. ]
Let's try that again.
[ Once again he shuts his eyes and holds his palm face-up in front of him. It takes a few more seconds of silent concentration, but then a second ball appears. He thinks the weight should be right now, but he hands it over to Wanda for some proper testing. ]
[never would have wanda figured that she would be a proper tester for how tennis balls should be, but this is where she’s at, now. taking it in her hands, she bounces it between them before throwing it at a wall.
it does bounce properly, now, and the ball dribbles down on the floor until it just rolls down towards the opposite end of the room. wanda’s eyes linger on it, turning a quarter of the way away from steve.]
When it comes to magic, you want to focus on things to be as realistic as possible. I know what the Quinjet looks like, since we—well—lived in it for a while, but if you asked me to replicate it, [she turns now to look at him] though it’d look right, it would never start or function properly. I can’t create something complex, especially not if I don’t understand how it works.
[—sure, she can will things to work, but ask anyone else to pilot her magic-made quinjet and the results might as well be disastrous.]
Tennis balls are simple objects. Weight, bounce, texture. Your shield is a simple object, too, all things considered. But the way you perceive it is different from how others do. You have to take that imbalance into consideration.
[he should expect his next task.]
Can you recreate it?
[not that steve will be recreating his shield in the waking world, but it will genuinely give him practice in focusing his intentions, as far as magic intermingling with thoughts is concerned.]
[ Wanda's explanation makes perfect sense, and Steve nods along as she lays out the example for him. He also doesn't know enough about the inner workings of the Quinjet to make anything other than a fancy place for someone to hang out or sleep for a while. It would never be able to fly.
Or... well, it's the Horizon. Maybe he just has to want it to fly enough, and it would work. But it's not like he has any need for that.
When Wanda asks about his shield, Steve smiles and straightens his shoulders, not unlike a kid who's just been singled out in class and asked a question for which they absolutely know the right answer. ]
That I've done before.
[ With that telltale metallic whir of vibranium, the shield appears suddenly, strapped to his arm. ]
... Honestly, even when I first came here and didn't have my memories, I was able to throw Sam's around no problem.
[ It's something baked into him, it seems. Something that comes as naturally to him as breathing. ]
[it's been baked into him, but that just makes him the perfect cookie-cutter soldier he was expected to be. wanda knows that's not the whole truth of who steve is—who struggled to find his own place in the world, a stranger to time.
(sometimes she wonders about how everything in the universe conspired to make it so that this specific group of people would cross paths. she would have never met steve, had he not been awoken so many decades into a future he never got to grow into. of all the time periods in the universe they come from, and they got to meet.)
she reaches for the shield, pressing a hand to the slight curve of it. vibranium always had a specific quality to it, reacting to touch, vibrating, as it were, almost as if countering whatever force was pressed against it. the sound of it was like a quiet song, steady and reliable. marred, now, by the blood of a woman who meant something to steve, cut in half, lying dead on the floor of a universe not their own.
wanda doesn't draw her hand away immediately, but instead drags it down the shield. its shape, as steve perceives it, disappears; what's left, instead, is a carcass of it: an outline of the shield drawn out in her red magic, holding still the same weight and feel as when it was intact.]
In the real world, unless you manage to find something like vibranium and someone to make you a shield, maybe you'll do best in being able to localize whatever magic you learn to create your own. [she turns her eyes up to him.] Is that something you want to do? Or do you want to learn something else?
I do have a shield. It's not made with vibranium, but it's still well-constructed.
[ Steve may not know much about what Viktor and Jayce do when it comes to the nitty gritty details, but he can tell that the shields they've made for him are top-notch in terms of quality, based on what they have available to him. It's not their fault that vibranium doesn't exist here. ]
So the idea was I would use telekinesis to move that shield around the way I'm used to mine moving. It can't ricochet off of things on its own, but with some help from my magic, it can behave similarly.
[ That's the idea, anyway. Steve looks to Wanda, her red rippling magic reflecting on her face, and shrugs his shoulders. He's no expert here, so maybe the theory behind what he wants to do is flawed.
He smiles sheepishly, the confident student from before gone now. ]
[as steve explains what he wants to do, her magic ceases entirely, and they’re left in the monotone hues of the room as it had been before. his sheepish smile is odd to see, because for once it is her telling steve about something that he ought to learn to do, and not the other way around.
she offers him a smile in return, momentarily, before drawing back.]
You have to imagine it like — a yo-yo. Like there’s always a stretchy string between it and yourself.
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no subject
always on time for tv and movie night.]
It was the last time I had a normal life.
[perhaps steve can recall vividly the last time he was — well, not a super soldier.
just steve rogers.
she is appreciative of the hand on her shoulder, but then moves further inside the room, fearless. there is a lot of sadness in her heart, still, but this isn't a memory she cannot revisit. wanda sits on the edge of the bed, kicking up dust in the process.]
Pietro and I found out months after the bombs that our parents were saving up money to fly us to America. We would go to Germany first, then take a plane from there. Passports were being confiscated by the government, so...
[oleg wanted to get it done as soon as he could, to get his family to safety.]
Not that it mattered. It all went up in flames that night. March 30, 1999. [a short nod] Some things are impossible to forget.
[suppressing painful memories is something else entirely; agatha had unlocked that for her. wanda looks up at steve. she knows why he came here, for something they had previously talked about. he wants to learn to use magic, to use it well.
time to break some mental limitations, then. in the same way she had done for matt when she had him create a tennis ball out of thin air.]
You're an artist, Steve. Can you put colors to the room?
[for, right now, it sits in the grayed-out shadows of a room without illumination, the only light coming from the beam of sunshine crossing the threshold of the door they had come in from. perhaps the grayscale is on purpose, at this point.]
You... don't have to force anything. [to think of how angles in a room would allow for his shield to return to him, should he throw it.] You want the walls to be green, so they will be green. That lamp's glow should be a warm orange, so that's what it'll be. See the image clearly in your mind.
[even if he gets one thing colored, one thing illuminated, that's enough of a push forward.
(and he should tell, by her tone, that this is a test so much as an exercise of his control.)]
no subject
Of course Steve can't help but dwell on when that had been, for him. Probably before his mom got sick, if he had to put a finer point on it. After that he had been on his own to some degree, despite Bucky's best efforts. Then the war had come, and nothing had really been the same after that.
When Wanda speaks up and fills the dusty, long-abandoned room with silence, it says a lot that Steve doesn't flinch at the sudden shift. He instead squares his shoulders and listens, that same sort of desperate longing for what could have been that he knows all too well himself filling his chest. If he hadn't had to tank the Valkyrie into the sea, what then?
He learned a long time ago there isn't a point in asking, regardless of what his future (his past?) supposedly holds.
Before he can say anything to any of that, though, Wanda presents him with an assignment of sorts. He can tell that this is a test, a part of the lesson he hadn't even realized was starting, just from her tone of voice. It's not so different from how he sounds when he's teaching. ]
... Right. I've got some practice with making my own domain, but— [ Adding details to someone else's, especially when it's something so precious, seems like another task entirely. Steve averts his gaze from Wanda so that he can focus on the room itself, and starts with the colors she mentioned. The walls, green. He closes his eyes and pictures a large paintbrush gliding over the monochrome wall, and when he opens them again the wall has changed — a deep forest green.
The lamp comes to life as well, casting a warm light like a sunset over the room. Then he turns back to Wanda, though it's not to seek approval but to ask a question. ]
But the things we can do in the Horizon aren't quite the same as magic, are they?
no subject
his question is expected.]
Just now, [she points at her eyes, closing them] you closed your eyes to picture what you wanted to do, didn't you?
[it's a question he can answer for himself. wanda opens her eyes again, looking over at him. without losing eye contact, she has the color of the walls he just painted a deep forest green into a bright orange. it happens almost instantaneously.]
Your newfound source of magic comes from the Singularity, as is the Horizon. If you grow comfortable and confident enough with how you make use of what the Horizon allows, then that will transfer to how you use magic in the real world.
[standing up, a twirl of her left hand has the walls shifting back to that deep forest green he had chosen. wanda stands in front of him, grabs hold of one of his hands with both of her own, but doesn't cover his palm.]
You know what a tennis ball is. Make one appear between our hands.
[and then—]
Five.
[it's a countdown]
Four.
no subject
He appreciates her patience with him, though, and can only hope that he'd been as patient when he was the one training her. What she's saying makes sense. The Singularity is the source of all magic here, so this plane which is its realm naturally allows for the closest connection with that wellspring.
Steve blinks at Wanda's approach, but doesn't flinch or pull back when she grabs for his hands. There's a trust between them that means he doesn't think twice about it. Despite everything, he's still comfortable in her presence.
A... tennis ball. Right. He can do this. He's messed around in his own domain.
Still, his brow furrows and he works at his bottom lip with his teeth as he focuses. He's handled a tennis ball. He knows the color, the weight, the texture. She's counting down, and at around "two," a tennis ball appears between their hands. ]
There you go, Miss Maximoff.
[ Addressing her as if she's a teacher. Still, he grins at her, relieved that he's been able to complete her assignments so far. ]
no subject
he looks up at his grinning face for a moment, before blinking and looking down at the tennis ball between their hands. she takes it, inspecting it, and a small smile curls upward.
she can already tell what's wrong.
dropping the ball to the floor, it bounces as expected; however, the bounce is shorter than what it could be, and it drops a little flatter after a few more seconds. picking it up, she tosses it from hand to hand before kindly delivering it to one of steve's hands.]
It's too heavy, Rogers.
[he can test it out himself if he wants.]
no subject
... Huh. Yeah.
[ He turns the ball around in his hands. If anything, he would have worried about the opposite problem, that he'd make it too light because everything feels light to him. Maybe that was just it, though — he'd overcompensated.
He tosses the ball from one hand to the other before setting it down on a nearby side table. ]
Let's try that again.
[ Once again he shuts his eyes and holds his palm face-up in front of him. It takes a few more seconds of silent concentration, but then a second ball appears. He thinks the weight should be right now, but he hands it over to Wanda for some proper testing. ]
How about that?
no subject
it does bounce properly, now, and the ball dribbles down on the floor until it just rolls down towards the opposite end of the room. wanda’s eyes linger on it, turning a quarter of the way away from steve.]
When it comes to magic, you want to focus on things to be as realistic as possible. I know what the Quinjet looks like, since we—well—lived in it for a while, but if you asked me to replicate it, [she turns now to look at him] though it’d look right, it would never start or function properly. I can’t create something complex, especially not if I don’t understand how it works.
[—sure, she can will things to work, but ask anyone else to pilot her magic-made quinjet and the results might as well be disastrous.]
Tennis balls are simple objects. Weight, bounce, texture. Your shield is a simple object, too, all things considered. But the way you perceive it is different from how others do. You have to take that imbalance into consideration.
[he should expect his next task.]
Can you recreate it?
[not that steve will be recreating his shield in the waking world, but it will genuinely give him practice in focusing his intentions, as far as magic intermingling with thoughts is concerned.]
no subject
Or... well, it's the Horizon. Maybe he just has to want it to fly enough, and it would work. But it's not like he has any need for that.
When Wanda asks about his shield, Steve smiles and straightens his shoulders, not unlike a kid who's just been singled out in class and asked a question for which they absolutely know the right answer. ]
That I've done before.
[ With that telltale metallic whir of vibranium, the shield appears suddenly, strapped to his arm. ]
... Honestly, even when I first came here and didn't have my memories, I was able to throw Sam's around no problem.
[ It's something baked into him, it seems. Something that comes as naturally to him as breathing. ]
no subject
(sometimes she wonders about how everything in the universe conspired to make it so that this specific group of people would cross paths. she would have never met steve, had he not been awoken so many decades into a future he never got to grow into. of all the time periods in the universe they come from, and they got to meet.)
she reaches for the shield, pressing a hand to the slight curve of it. vibranium always had a specific quality to it, reacting to touch, vibrating, as it were, almost as if countering whatever force was pressed against it. the sound of it was like a quiet song, steady and reliable. marred, now, by the blood of a woman who meant something to steve, cut in half, lying dead on the floor of a universe not their own.
wanda doesn't draw her hand away immediately, but instead drags it down the shield. its shape, as steve perceives it, disappears; what's left, instead, is a carcass of it: an outline of the shield drawn out in her red magic, holding still the same weight and feel as when it was intact.]
In the real world, unless you manage to find something like vibranium and someone to make you a shield, maybe you'll do best in being able to localize whatever magic you learn to create your own. [she turns her eyes up to him.] Is that something you want to do? Or do you want to learn something else?
no subject
[ Steve may not know much about what Viktor and Jayce do when it comes to the nitty gritty details, but he can tell that the shields they've made for him are top-notch in terms of quality, based on what they have available to him. It's not their fault that vibranium doesn't exist here. ]
So the idea was I would use telekinesis to move that shield around the way I'm used to mine moving. It can't ricochet off of things on its own, but with some help from my magic, it can behave similarly.
[ That's the idea, anyway. Steve looks to Wanda, her red rippling magic reflecting on her face, and shrugs his shoulders. He's no expert here, so maybe the theory behind what he wants to do is flawed.
He smiles sheepishly, the confident student from before gone now. ]
Would that... work?
no subject
she offers him a smile in return, momentarily, before drawing back.]
You have to imagine it like — a yo-yo. Like there’s always a stretchy string between it and yourself.
[that might help his telekinectic efforts.]
I think it’ll work.
[finally, an evaluation of his thoughts.]
You’ll have to practice, though.