( open and max mayfield is not often found in the same sentence.
but there is something about the calm that is coaxing — even if it doesn't erase anything entirely, it is so tempting to follow it down the rabbit hole, to really actually believe this stranger who'd come out of nowhere. or at least, who'd come when max was least expecting it, when she was most vulnerable.
tension spikes back into her at the mention of a red sky, in how the corners of her eyes pinch, how she looks to the blue (normal) one above them and expects it to change. the same way the look slides back to wanda with some simmering, clearly reluctant suspicion — in conflict between hope and fear.
(she'd been lulled into a false safety not too long ago before, a mother's touch turning so thoroughly sinister as that world had warped around her; then at billy's grave; then she'd walked willingly back, because it had been the right thing to do, if not the only.)
except — would any of this matter if she was already dead? if they failed?
max didn't actually want to think about it. the list of questions should be bottomless, and given a few more hours, maybe it would be.
instead, there's talk of magic. and well, while superpowers aren't a completely new idea to her anymore, it isn't a totally common thing. her own nose wrinkles, an unintentional mirror to wanda's. ) I'm fine. I — ( uncertain, an attempt at convincing. its the details themselves that stick out to her.) — it's fine.
( more to the point, despite how different wanda's company seems, how it seems to be missing any sense of the same dread vecna carried around every writhing limb, how it almost seemed kind, some facts alone were a little too close to what was just left behind to fully ignore. ) Your — magic could see that? The broken house with the red sky?
no subject
but there is something about the calm that is coaxing — even if it doesn't erase anything entirely, it is so tempting to follow it down the rabbit hole, to really actually believe this stranger who'd come out of nowhere. or at least, who'd come when max was least expecting it, when she was most vulnerable.
tension spikes back into her at the mention of a red sky, in how the corners of her eyes pinch, how she looks to the blue (normal) one above them and expects it to change. the same way the look slides back to wanda with some simmering, clearly reluctant suspicion — in conflict between hope and fear.
(she'd been lulled into a false safety not too long ago before, a mother's touch turning so thoroughly sinister as that world had warped around her; then at billy's grave; then she'd walked willingly back, because it had been the right thing to do, if not the only.)
except — would any of this matter if she was already dead? if they failed?
max didn't actually want to think about it. the list of questions should be bottomless, and given a few more hours, maybe it would be.
instead, there's talk of magic. and well, while superpowers aren't a completely new idea to her anymore, it isn't a totally common thing. her own nose wrinkles, an unintentional mirror to wanda's. ) I'm fine. I — ( uncertain, an attempt at convincing. its the details themselves that stick out to her.) — it's fine.
( more to the point, despite how different wanda's company seems, how it seems to be missing any sense of the same dread vecna carried around every writhing limb, how it almost seemed kind, some facts alone were a little too close to what was just left behind to fully ignore. ) Your — magic could see that? The broken house with the red sky?