The Variant [Part One] [Wanda Maximoff [FF] | Elizabeth Olsen

Chapter 9

Milla's eyes widen as the dybbuks pursue her. Unlike the sublime world, she went with the Scarlet Witch, this time she's trapped in the pitch darkness. She could hear the slithering and the crawling getting closer right behind her, despite running as fast as she could.

A red brick wall materialized right in front of her. Milla tries turning to the left: a wall. Then she ran to the right: still a wall. The barricades started narrowing towards Milla when she looked behind, the empty-eyed black skeletal creatures lunged at her small frame. Milla screams in agony as they rip her skin & flesh at a rapid pace, spilling her blood and entrails and consuming it while she's still fully awake.

Milla could have sworn that her consciousness has transported to the body of all the demons around her - She could see and feel "herself" devouring her body through them in horror.

---

"Milla,"

"Milla, wake up,"

"Milla!"

Milla's eyes open. She woke to the sight of Wanda looking down at her lying body. The woman has prepared a clean towel and a glass of water nearby. The redhead wipes the kid's forehead from the cold sweat trickling down her temples.

"Take deep breaths," Wanda said, coaxing the child to listen and follow what she was saying. Milla did and started calming down.

"Water," Milla croaked. Wanda gave the drink to which Milla chugged down quickly. The panic and anxiety had subsided. The child looked at her hands and saw the marks caused by the demons, they were real.

Wanda scans the child's appearance: she looked like she darted from one point to another, sweaty, and ragged; the alarming part is that her clothes had been grappled and tattered even though the child is just sleeping, Wanda could imagine something sinister and capable of traversing through multiversal means has been harassing the girl.

The red-haired woman gasped when she parted the girl's hair to the side revealing a tiny flow of blood from a wound.

"Stay still," Wanda said. She left the bedroom to look for the first-aid kit. When she came back. The child is still sitting there in utter shock and confusion.

"Where am I?" Milla said, baffled.

"You're in my cabin," Wanda said, as she started salving and bandaging the wound on her head.

Once finished, Milla tried to stand up but couldn't as she fell to the ground, her legs are trembling and fatigued. Wanda kneels to help her up & while doing so the Scarlet Witch perceives Milla's consciousness in both the physical world and the hellish one: half is in her body while the other is still possessing one of the demons that clawed at her.

---

"She has been running from it for so long," Helen said, staring at Milla's oneiric state, which is the condition the sorceress put the child on temporarily for further observation. The night is still up and about, the spell she casts would help the girl get some good night's sleep while she and the Scarlet Witch would watch.

Wanda decided to take her astral counterpart in charge.

"Running from what?" The Scarlet Witch said, looking at the pale, silver-robed woman whose entire ensemble opposes hers.

"Going back and forth from here and the Dark World," Helen said.

The Dark World. The Scarlet Witch thought it was the place she resided in, the place where Wundagore castle was. She remembers the demons the undead Dr. Strange variant conjured to attack her; it was pestilent even for a powerful magic-user like her.

She couldn't imagine how terrifying it would be for a child who has no grasp of her ability; let alone understand the unforgiving world that she subconsciously visits against her own will.

"She's misplaced; both in a universal scale and in her memory too," Helen walks around the room.

"Milla knows how her parents died because it was the last thing she saw before landing here. But the rest? Her life? Only consists of bits-and-pieces she is still trying to patch up," Helen said. The Scarlet Witch listens quietly while looking at the sleeping Milla.

"That's why I allowed you, the Scarlet Witch, here, despite the sanctum of the Abbey disagreeing with my wishes," Helen continues. The red-haired woman flinched at the mention of her name.

"Then why do you permit me," Scarlet Witch said.

"To help me find the answers. You have the power to dreamwalk and dive into everyone's psychosomatics - the mind and the body. Just like the child. The child also acquires an ancient form of magic that compeers with the chaos magic you possess, if unlocked - it could save us all from the incoming threat," Helen said.

"What threat?"

Helen turns to face the Scarlet Witch, her silvery robes swooshed as she walks.

"From this," Helen waves her hand to cast a vision right in front of them is an image of perpetual destruction: The town outside the Abbey's barrier has been destroyed, the snowy mountains around them have been demolished, the waters boiled dry, the trees have been assigned, the sky pitch-dark and the sun blood-red.

In front of the Abbey is a colossal size of a red man with unruly black hair, yellow blazing eyes, and sharp teeth. The red man is surrounded by brimstone fire. The red man lets out a vicious grin at both Scarlet Witch and Helen like he's fully aware that the two would arrive. - Then the image Helen conjures vanishes.

"Mephisto, the deceiver, that's his name. If we don't stop him here then he will wreak havoc on the other universes," Helen said.

The redhead looks at Helen.

"Billy... Tommy... " Scarlet Witch gasps in concern.

"Oh yes... Your sons living in the other realm and their surrogate mother (your other self) will be in danger. Unless you help us eliminate the threat and unlock the child's potential then everybody will be safe," Helen said.

The Scarlet Witch looks down on Milla. No wonder why the child could not control her astral form properly, there was so much pressure and burden on her shoulders. Dealing with the loss of her family and memory, and at the same time trying to master how to manifest her powers.

"And besides you know you want to read through the static right?" Helen said. The woman knows that the woman is about the white noise covering Milla's thoughts.

"You felt it didn't you? That bond?" Helen smiled. She knows that something is going on between the Scarlet Witch and Milla, the fellowship that Helen perceives to be something sincere, tender, & maternal.

"Yes," Scarlet Witch answers. She sat beside Milla's body and started stroking the girl's hair.

"Now's your chance," Helen said, looking at the kid.

"The spell would last until six in the morning," Helen said, then left. The Scarlet Witch's red-gleamed green eyes watch as the pale woman's astral form flies away from their cabin and back into the Abbey where her private quarters are.

Her gaze turns down toward the child as she proceeds to take the night's watch, ruffling Milla's dark-brown hair - while doing so Wanda notices the red highlights starting to emerge at the tips of the girl's hair.