Westview - WandaVision AUL AU

|| W - SHOWTIME ||

At first there was nothing. 

 Countless tears. Stoner holding him back from jumping into the lava pool too. Bloodstained memories. 

Just... endless nothingness. 

A world without Player. And then there was just a tiny glimpse of hope. And here he was. 

 And Player was gone. And life was meaningless without him. 

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What is...? 

Where am I? 

He looked down in shock, only to realize there was nothing beneath his voice. 

Wait. Not voice. He didn't have any vocal cords. He was thinking. He didn't have a brain, though. 

What... the hell? 

Wait. There was a tingle. Just a spark of feeling in his toes. He had... feet? Just feet? What kind of weird creature was he if all he had was feet? 

He had a disturbing pang of confusion as he realized he didn't know who he was. Was he human? Those feet looked human. But... did he have a name? 

Surely he wasn't being born just now. He felt like he'd lived a life. He just couldn't remember any of it. 

 Hold on. He had legs! Actual legs. So he wasn't a weird creature made of feet. Now he had a waist, and a chest, and a face and oh my god he had eyes and the first thing he saw was the house forming around him. 

Out of nothing? Matter was materializing around him, and-- Whoa. Were those tendrils of fire spilling from... someone? Surely there wasn't a person beneath the red strings of magic. 

 Magic? But the house was definitely forming from the red fire of magic. Hold on. Color was gone. As soon as he thought it, he couldn't even remember what colors looked like. Had he... died? Was this some sort of weird heaven? 

 Wait, heaven? Was he good? Maybe this was hell. The house was nice, though. He had a feeling hell wouldn't be this nice. 

The last piece of wood built itself into the ceiling, and the person in front of him collapsed. 

Wow. He was gorgeous. White-blond hair curled slightly at the edges was hidden beneath a white captain's hat. 

Captain. That was his name. He felt a dizzying rush of love for Captain, which was weird, because, wasn't this the first time he met him? He was frozen in place, not because he couldn't move, but because this whole world was so confusing he was afraid if he moved it would all dissolve beneath him. And there this distinct feeling of *emptiness* drowning his lungs so that no words could come out of his mouth. 

Captain looked up, and he held his breath. He had shockingly blue eyes, like someone had wrapped up the afternoon sky into an eye. 

But... Color wasn't real. Color didn't exist. Why did he think this person's eyes were blue? Had he actually seen the sky? But his eyes were so hurting that he could barely look at him without instinctly wanting to hug him. "...Player?" he said, with so much frailness in his voice he knew he had no idea what was going on either. 

Player. Was that his name? Did he deserve to have a name, next to someone like Captain? 

Hold on. That wasn't his thought. And it was quite over the top.

Get out of my head, he thought with a surge of fury he'd never felt before. Captain winced, falling to his knees again. 

"Player..." he said, a wave of panic flashing through his eyes. "What is going on?" 

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Player still didn't know what was going on. 

Was he alive? Was Captain alive? 

It'd been three days since he'd been born now. (Born? Had he been born? The details were blurring together.) 

Captain had become more and more confident throughout the days, more and more like the Captain he thought he knew. There was a playful sense of naiveness radiating off him now. 

Every day had been pretty much the same. Wait. Had it? Now he couldn't remember any of it, no matter how hard he thought. 

There was an unbelievable sense of give in, everything is fine, be happy pulsing over and over through his veins. 

Was Captain doing that? It didn't look like he was. Had the days actually passed? He felt they had. 

Now he was in some sort of stage of never-ending anxiety and fear, which (much to his dismay) felt like what he'd been living like most of his life. 

Waiiiiiit. 

Why was he dressed in 50's clothes? He was not this fancy. 

He had a... job? Was that why he was dressed like this? It must have been a ridiculous job, if this was what he had to wear. 

He wanted a red beanie on his head. Not his awkward short top hat that didn't fit his personality at all. The oddly familiar face of someone wearing not one, but two black top hats stacked on top of the other, wearing a... 

Space suit? 

Where had that come from? 

Doesn't matter, his brain hummed with maddening calmness. Must have been a dream. 

But when he dreamed, he dreamed of... himself? 

Fighting impostors (impostors, what a melodramatic name he'd come up with) with nothing but a stun gun in his hand, which had now been flung out of his hand by the one he was trying to stun. 

They looked frighteningly young, to be trying to kill him. At least four years younger than him. (How old was he? When had he died, if he was dead?) 

A three-pointed colorful hat sat on electric blue dyed curls, bells jingling restlessly as they swung a fencing sword at him. He ducked, and caught a brief sight of Captain flinging the other impostors off a blond green-eyed friend with a crown on his head. 

Friend? It had been more than that, he realized. More than a friend, at some point. 

He lost balanca as Jester (where had that name come from?) backed him to the edge of the lava pool, the fencing sword pushing at his chest in a frightening way. 

And Jester pushed him. They raised their foot in a terrifyingly fast way, swiftly pushing against his chest as he fell. 

Captain's gaze fell on him again, and red tendrils of magic surrounded him for a moment, suspended above the lava. An impostor tackled Captain from behind, and Player saw, very briefly, the look of heartbreak in his face as he lost control, and Player sank down into the lava with a scream of grief from Captain. 

That was the dream, recurring over and over in his mind, every day and every night and every time he closed his eyes. It was there. Along with a stab of grief so strong it made him feel completely helpless. 

But it wasn't real. 

It couldn't be. 

He was alive now, wasn't he? 

And now he was moving, though it wasn't him that had wanted to move, and a message, clear and strong in the voice of Captain as the tendrils of magic drowned into his mind: It's showtime.

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Honestly, you have no idea how fun it was to write this chapter