epilogue
╰ ( circle of life )

tw; death.

💫 ━━ WANDA MAXIMOFF had murdered her niece, Paisley Maximoff. Every time she checks on her sons in the middle of the night, just to make sure they're both still safe, she thinks of the niece she killed. She thinks about the cousin her sons watched die, and she thinks about how good of friends they would have been.

But reality hits her every time, because she killed Paisley Maximoff by using her powers to harness America Chavez's universe hoping abilities. She forced her niece to push and push her own strength until every possible universe opened and her two sons stepped into her world.

She collapsed against the stone under her, and Wanda didn't even cry. She was too caught up in having her sons back, that she didn't even shed a single tear for her niece. America had cried, she had cried until Steven Strange pulled her away and took Paisley somewhere else.

In killing Paisley, Wanda had rewritten the darkhold. Paisley was the strongest witch in the world, and she would always be the strongest. But her story didn't end with her ruling the world and becoming a fearful god, it ended with her becoming a protector and a lovable hero.

Paisley had died making sure that America Chavez would live to see another day, to live so long into her years that maybe she'd be able to find her own family. It was her mission, even if she knew what it would mean — that Wanda would kill her using that ability.

Paisley didn't get to see her father before she died. She had always thought that maybe she would die by his side, but when she collapsed the only person she saw was her aunt turning her back on her.

Steven Strange didn't try and find Wanda, not after what she had done to her own niece. Turning her back on her dying niece, he realized that she was no longer Wanda, just a shell of who she was.

He tried everything — every spell to bring her back. She hadn't lived, she had barely gotten through the first eighteen years of her life and still had so much more going for her. Every spell — but nothing worked, she continued to be a shell of who she was, just a body.

But what was a body with a soul? That was what Steven couldn't figure out ... she still had her soul. He could still feel it within her body, holding on for something that he couldn't figure out. He couldn't place it together, as to why she still had her soul but no heartbeat. Why she hadn't crossed over.

Then, maybe, he realized she hadn't crossed over because her family wasn't with her. So, he used his portals and took Paisley to the once place he figured she would want to be, where her father was.

Her father's reaction to her lifeless body, was nothing Steven would wish on his worst enemies. He never wished this on anyone, not even the worst of the worst.

But the worst of the worst was this. Watching Pietro kneel on the ground clutching his daughter's body against his own body. If was a full circle; when he had died she had done the same thing. She had held her father until she had been dragged away from his body. She had cried every last tear she could, and then she watched the last bit of life she could hold onto of her father, drift away.

Her soul never moved. Steven watched as it lit up when her father had hugged her body, but he didn't watch her life return. He wondered if maybe she couldn't cross over because she was stuck, because something wasn't finished. But he let the grieving family be, and walked away.

💫 ━━ THAT THING — the one that wasn't finished ? — yeah, that was actually Paisley Maximoff coming back to life. Somehow, she had managed to come back four and a half months later, and when asked by her father how she was able to do it, she simply shrugged and said that she was truly never gone.

Tony had kept her hooked up to every machine and price of medical equipment he could get. He forced a tube to breathe for her, and made sure that oxygen was filling her lungs even if she couldn't do it on her own. He wasn't ready to let go, and so he held onto the hope that she would come back.

To which she did. She came back, healthy as she had ever been. More powerful than she had even been. She no longer was the person someone feared, but the person someone hoped to see and idolize.

Paisley Maximoff realized that Agatha had been right. Together, it is your destiny to destroy the world. Both Paisley and Wanda had been told, and it had happened.

Paisley was — is — her father's world. Wanda, coercing her niece, making the two work together to achieve a common outcome, had destroyed someone's world. That had done what the darkhold had said they would do.

Because even if Paisley had come back, for those four months, Pietro's world had ended.

Wanda's world had ended when she told her children, and then, it was mended by the death of her niece. If only she knew that her children, Billy and Tommy, were actually walking the earth in someone else's bodies.

When Billy — though he's not in Billy's body but someone else's — shows up on her doorstep and explains everything, Paisley doesn't look back and hold his mother's actions against him. She don't understand that Billy had been able to keep her soul tethered to her body long enough for him to find her, and when he did, he brought her back. He was a witch like his mother and cousin, but he specialized in life and death.

Unlike his mother, he worked to bring those from the dead back to life, well Wanda was taking the life from the living and turning them into the dead. Like she did with Paisley.

💫 ━━ TWO YEARS LATER, Paisley sees her aunt again, but she simply just walks away. She leaves her behind as she walks up to her dad and Tony, who are chatting about something as Morgan runs around the park with Snacks, Pietro's new dog.

For once, her life is peaceful. She's where she belongs, she's alive, and more importantly, she's living.

She has a part time job as a cashier at a retail store; which she absolutely loves. She meets new people every day, and she loves the way it makes her feel normal.

She meets Peter and Ryder every Sunday for supper, which is so amazing and she loves to hear their university stories — even though Ryder had accidentally gotten kicked out a week before his semester ended and had to redo a whole semester again.

She kept in contact with Billy ( who had stopped looking for his mother when he realized she had the two children she wanted, but found his brother Tommy and stayed in each others lives ) and taught him things the and there when it came to their abilities.

Paisley Maximoff was thriving. She was living. And she was happy. She was safe. And she was loved.

But ... the thing that made her the happiest, was when she stepped into her father's open arms and welcome the hug that followed.

final authors note ... !
i know this is long over due, but i needed to write it in order to have the closure for my other marvel fic, which is paisley, but if she had never been handed over to hydra and stayed in the red room. to where she and yelena became a mother daughter duo.

(check it out lovelies!)

i just want to thank every single one of you readers for the support and kindness you've shown. even by just reading, you've made my day one step better. thank you all, so so much, i can't thank you enough. i hope that choose to follow me over to welcome home, where we can see what paisleys life looks like under different circumstances. but if you don't, thank you for everything.

with all the love, forever and always, rora.