[ peter keeps stock-still while she talks, arms crossed and shoulder leaning against the threshold to the room, little more than an arms length from the couch and treacherously unsure of what to say.

there’s a small wave of guilt, somehow, for not knowing who pietro was until he’s come to him in that blur. he wishes he knew him for longer than a frazzled recollection. there’s a small huff, brittle humor in the small curve of his mouth. he was twelve minutes older, and he would never let me forget.

it felt like i was dead, and she talks of anger and he nods. it wasn’t the same, their stories, but they had uncanny parallels, found in losing the people that meant the most. ] Like you’re drowning.

[ slips out, all sentiment, before he watches the twins fade through the scarlet, doesn’t realize the step he’s taken forward as it happens until he’s looking at her offered hand and tear filled eyes. how could she ever think he’d hate her for any of this, he still doesn’t know, a hand carefully slipped into hers.

throat suddenly dry, confronted face-on with something he’s been trying to tamp down ever since he’d scrambled himself out of the tumultuous interweave of their collective grief. don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.

but she asks so directly and so simply, settling in on the couch and he deflates. he considers it a moment, considers the honest hurt wanda had just shared with him.

parallels.

he shrugs. his voice is small, a waver at the edges of his words.] She stayed when she should have ran?

[ memories still frayed and raw. even if they weren’t just scrubbed through, even then, sometimes when he closes his eyes all he can see is her in the rubble but it’s especially bright now.

her last words, and the burning anger that still stings the back of his throat like bile. ] We wanted to help, and things just got messed up. I really messed up.

[ he takes a breath and the words all tumble out faster than he can stop them. he hasn’t had the chance to tell anyone else, not in the same context. strange knew the facts, sam knew the loss. wanda seemed to know his heart. ] There were all these people coming in from different universes — people who knew me. Or — versions of me, I guess? [ he doesn’t infill the how’s or why’s, apprehensive. guilty, embarrassed, and maybe not wanting to bring in stephen (he thinks of the wrecked man in the horizon just days before, all sharp words and dismissal and hurt). ]

We — wanted to help them. Sending them back would have meant they’d just be sent back to die, but —

But I thought we could help them instead and May agreed. She convinced me it was the right thing and —

There was a fight, [ he doesn’t look at wanda as he talks. doesn’t look at anything in particular as much as through. his throat tightens, hands tense under hers.

I want to rip him apart.

he nearly had, too. a near thing until his own counter, a displaced peter parker with nothing but understanding in his words and his eyes, reminded him of a different choice. reminded him of everything she stood for too. ] One of the last things she told me is that I still made the right choice. And that I had a responsibility.

[ he shakes his head, and finally chances to look at her, near stranger no longer, who somehow knows the most now. ] Is it bad I still wish I killed him? [ he doesn't specify who, isn't sure he can, or he needs to, the corners of his eyes tight. ] I didn't. It wouldn't have changed anything but —

It doesn't go away.