Chapter Text
1. Billy Kaplan-Maximoff
Finding Tommy, it turns out, was the easy part.
Convincing Tommy, who had also lost his memories of everything that had happened to them, was a little more difficult. But there had been an unexpected win in the body that Billy had placed his older twin in, and it’s that Tommy was desperate enough to get away from the Shepherds that he agreed to come with them.
It had been nice, being on the road with Tommy, and sometimes Agatha. Tommy had eventually come around when he had woken up one morning, referenced 4 things from Westview in a row and then stared at his hands for nearly 40 minutes while Billy awkwardly rubbed his back and Agatha cackled around them.
Billy didn’t even remember Tommy calling him a dorkasaurus rex, but Tommy’s mind was always faster than his. He can’t help but be jealous that Tommy remembers more from Westview than he does.
Anyways, what is actually the hardest part about all of this is that being haunted by Agatha, while he loves her, is sometimes absolutely terrible. At least Tommy gets to deal with some of her bullshit too, since they’d made the unfortunate discovery that Tommy’s magical resurrection combined with witch heritage means he also gets a scoop of the Agatha nonsense.
“Does she ever shut up?” Tommy asks him now, pinching his brows as Agatha yammers on about something in the backseat.
Billy slides a look at his twin, who is glowering at Agatha through the mirror. Tommy, whose new body was a kid named Tommy Shepherd, was lucky enough to keep more similar traits to his old body than Billy was. His hair is dark brown and long, though he’s bleached it white now, and his eyes are dark brown, unlike Billy’s gray. He’s even kept the freckles that Billy remembers from the Hex, though they’re faint.
“No,” Billy clarifies for his twin, who sighs, “Can’t ghosts move on?”
“They can,” Billy glances at Agatha, who has gone quiet, “But she’s sensitive about that.”
“Awww,” Tommy pulls a mocking pout at her, “She’s so sensitive. ”
That’s the other thing. Tommy is kinda an asshole now. Billy finds it mostly funny, because Tommy’s more of a sibling-asshole to him, but to other people he’s just downright rude. Agatha says she finds it hilarious too, but Billy just feels guilty every time because he’s very sure it’s because he has placed him in a body who didn’t love him the way that he should have been, and Tommy’s just kinda coping now.
He’s told Tommy that one time, when it was just the two of them through guilty tears. Tommy just snorted and said that Tommy Shepherd would have never had anyone to come save him and he’s grateful that he does have a family now, who love him.
Billy had cried harder at that. Tommy had told him to stop crying because it was weirding him out, before hugging him.
He’s the best older twin ever. Even if Billy would never tell him that.
“I can’t believe I have to spend an eternity with you both,” complains Agatha.
Tommy rolls his eyes, “You do not have to be here, Auntie. You can literally go wherever you want.”
They’re driving now to New York, where someone has apparently spotted the White Vision. Tommy remembered the thing from his time in the Hex and has insisted that they got to go blow it up. Just like he did his school accidentally. Billy had complied only because Eddie was going to meet them there.
Sorry, Teddy. Since apparently Eddie had been lying to him about a lot of things too, being a Skrull and such. Tommy had cried with laughter when Billy had told him that his boyfriend was a) an alien and b) changed his name from Teddy to Eddie to go into hiding.
“That’s so fucking stupid,” Tommy said, “At least change your name to something cool, like….”
“Like Tommy?” Agatha had remarked sarcastically, but Tommy had nodded and pointed at her like she was the wisest woman on the planet.
Billy had rolled his eyes. He’d watched Agatha leave little flower petals at every place they stopped at for Rio, even though she had been the one to tell her to stay away. He still can’t wrap his head around Agatha’s thought process on that one, but she had refused to elaborate on anything. He barely knows why she’s still here, since he’s found Tommy.
Tommy, meanwhile, puts his feet up on the dashboard and slides his stupid yellow sunglasses over his face. He’s chewing gum, which he says his good for his ADHD, “Why are cars so slow?”
“Just because you don’t need one doesn’t mean I don’t.”
“Can’t you just magick yourself there?” Tommy glances at him over his shades.
Billy rolls his eyes. He’s been doing that a lot with his twin, “I’m not Wanda. I’m not gonna play with reality just because I can.”
Tommy shrugs, “Mom didn’t teleport that much.”
“I didn’t know she did at all,” Billy ignores the fact that Tommy calls Wanda “Mom.”
He’s never had 3 years with another mother. Mary Shepherd certainly wasn’t one to him. Billy will simply let it slide.
“Could Dad teleport?”
“No,” Billy omits the fact that William Kaplan and therefore himself, know that information because they had wanted to be an Avenger so badly that they researched each one obsessively and took notes on all of them, “He could shoot lasers from his head.”
Tommy blinks, “Why couldn’t I have gotten that power? The fuck?”
Billy shrugs, but before he can say anything Agatha suddenly pops up through him and says something. She makes him jump so hard that the car sways back and forth. Tommy lets out a annoyed shriek as his legs fly off the dashboard and there’s a dangerous moment where Billy thinks, Ah, we’re going to die.
They don’t. But Tommy makes them pull off the highway for Billy almost killed me again Taco Bell.
Tommy’s metabolism really is something else. Billy orders a quesadilla and contemplates his next few miserable Taco Bell-induced hours on the road as the only member of their party who can drive. Tommy doesn’t see the point in it and Agatha is a ghost.
Speaking of Agatha… He turns to look over at her, “What was the point of that?”
She makes a face, “It was funny.”
“Was it?” He says with his best Agatha impression, “What were you actually going to say?”
She raises an eyebrow at him, “Well, nothing…”
“No,” Billy frowns at her, “If you almost kill me, I deserve to know why.”
Agatha sighs and says, “As I was saying, I’m like 90% sure your mom gave you and your brother the exact same powers as herself and your uncle as a coping strategy to deal with the death of her brother. She never got a happy childhood and therefore was unconsciously trying to recreate their relationship through you and Thomas.”
Billy stares at her for a long moment, completely baffled by the depth of this revelation. Agatha takes him in for a second before snorting, “Don’t give me that look, I told you me and your mom were ex…. friends. I know a lot about her.”
“You know, I’m just going to stop asking,” Billy decides, placing his head in his hands, because what the fuck.
How is he supposed to cope with knowing he’s just a conjured up way for his mother to deal with her trauma? Billy sort of gets it (cough cough The Road) but now he has to live with this for the rest of his life and then some.
Billy sits in silence until he hears a telltale whoosh and a warm quesadilla being placed in his lap. Tommy turns to Agatha and asks, “The fuck did you do?”
“I told him that you and him were just a way for your mother to cope with the loss of her childhood innocence and reclaim the childhood lost with her brother.”
He puts his head up in time to see Tommy nod sagely at this, like it’s all perfectly normal and say, “That’s so real of her.”
I hate this fucking family.
2. Tommy Shepherd-Maximoff
Let’s get one thing straight, Tommy doesn’t like Agatha Harkness all that much.
Even back in the Hex, he had found her weird and unusual and the way she had eyed him and Billy had made him angry and upset most days that he does remember. When Billy had turned up at his juvie with Agatha fucking Harkness floating behind him, Tommy had wondered to himself if he could blast her out of the sky with his molecule-exploding powers and it would still work on a ghost.
He’d settled into a dynamic with Billy right away, because that’s his brother and even if he’s weird and dorky and finally out of the closet (about time), Tommy still loves him in his own way. He remembers the Billy from the Hex, the one that almost cried thinking about how Sparky was alone, and can easily match it to the guilt-ridden person his brother has become now.
Tommy wishes, secretly, that Billy hadn’t been the one with magical powers and it had instead been him. Then Billy wouldn’t need to drown in the guilt that he so clearly has and Tommy could be the older twin and shoulder that burden for him. He will always be willing to do that, because he loves his family more than anything and always has.
Billy’s still struggling with that. Tommy can tell. His 3 years away from the Maximoffs have taken their toll and he still can’t call Mom ‘Mom’ without closing his hands and his hands shaking as he thinks about the Kaplans and the Road and what he’d done.
Tommy just does what he can to help shoulder Billy’s burden a bit. That’s all he can do.
He hides the scars this body has from his parents and juvie and the bullies. He doesn’t tell Billy about the nightmares and the pain and how when he’d drowned he’d been the most terrified he’s ever been in his life and he can’t look at water the same way ever again.
So when he wakes up from a nightmare about Billy drowning with him that day, he decides to not say anything at all. Instead, he gets up, grabs a beer that he stole from the nearby store from his bag and goes to sit on the hotel roof like a normal person. Beer doesn’t do that much for him, and Tommy would be a cigarette or vape guy if he wasn’t so sure it would impact his powers in some way.
That’s where Agatha finds him, sitting on the roof with a Coors Lite in his hands watching the stars.
“You could do so much better than a Coors Lite, Thomas,” she says, floating onto the roof and drawing his attention.
He doesn’t bother looking over at her. First off, because he lowkey thinks her ghostly appearance is creepy and second, because he can’t be bothered. She scoffs and presses on, “At least steal something better quality.”
“Beer doesn’t do anything for me anyways,” He tells her, with a long sip of it, “Burn through it too fast.”
“So why are you sitting on a roof drinking something disgusting by yourself?”
Tommy blinks, glances down at the beer and then back at her, “Because maybe I was hoping this time it would.”
She hums and “sits down” near him, watching as he spins the bottle in his hands. He ignores her for a bit, because why would he talk to her when he doesn’t have to, but eventually, for some reason that he can’t explain, he ends up speaking, “It should’ve been me.”
“Hm?”
“To find him,” Tommy adds, “It should have been me. Billy’s too…” He pauses and gestures with his beer, “Sensitive.”
Agatha snickers before she says, “He is. But he’s also not.”
Tommy turns his head around to look over at her. She offers him a half-smile, “Your brother is too much like your mom, in some ways. He’s all of her power without the anger. He has it, but he can’t use the way she does. The way that you can.”
The beer stops shifting in his hands and he looks over at her. Her smile is thin, but still there, “Don’t give me that look, Thomas. You have the same temper as her.”
“Really now?” He’d never thought of himself as Wanda’s son in that way.
He’s always kinda thought to himself that he’s just a reflection of Pietro, and Billy as Wanda. He knows that the Pietro he’d known wasn’t the real one, but… still.
Agatha huffs a laugh, “You two are just like her, just in different ways. The fact that you’re more tolerable to be around than her must be your father’s fault.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tommy frowns, but Agatha pushes on, “Kids are always the best of their parents. You two are the best of Wanda and whatever your dad’s name was.”
“Vision.”
“Right,” She gives him an appraising look, but there’s something in her eyes that stops him from any sarcastic remarks he was contemplating about dementia taking her in her afterlife, “Just keep that in mind.”
He finds himself nodding, pressing the cool lip of the beer to his lips as he takes another drink. Agatha watches him for a moment, before letting out a small sigh, “Drink that fast. If Billy wakes up and you’re not there, I think he might have a heart attack and it would annoying to have two ghosts haunting you.”
Tommy blinks at that and then slowly nods, watching her as she turns and drifts aways from him, back downstairs to watch over Billy. Her words bounce around his head, the way she spoke them so soft it had surprised him.
Kids are always the best of their parents.
“Huh,” he says outloud, “Guess she’s not that bad after all…”
3. White Vision
Getting involved with Ultron on their quest to find their father was not exactly on Billy’s ‘to-do’ list of things to do in New York, but reuniting with his boyfriend definitely was. The two of them, despite the fact that Ultron is still out there as a threat, have been camped out in Kate Bishop’s living room for the past hour cuddling on their couch.
Tommy had made himself absent along with Kate so it’s just Billy and Teddy together and… Vision.
The White Vision, specifically, who has been wandering in and out of the room as if worried that Teddy is going to do something criminal to his son. Billy’s still not certain if the White Vision is even truly his father, or if this version of the Vision simply just has all of his father’s memories. Either way, being randomly hugged by a random all white version of his father when he, Kate, Teddy and Tommy had shown up to that facility had been awkward to say the least.
“Billy,” Teddy mumbles suddenly from where his head is resting on Billy’s collarbone.
Billy glances down at his boyfriend, who is making a pleading face at him, “Billy, your father is stressing me out so much. Can you get him to–”
“He’s not really my dad,” Billy says awkwardly, watching as White Vision phases through a nearby wall to glace at them again before pacing into another room.
It is mildly stressful. He can see why Teddy finds this entire thing weird. He also… just kind of wants alone time with his boyfriend and as nice as it is to feel he’s being watched out for, he kinda just wants some privacy. He lets out a small sigh, about to stand up and talk to Vision, but before he can, he hears a familiar voice talking to him.
“You’re stressing the poor kid out,” Billy can practically hear her eye roll, “He’s not going anywhere, Roboto”
Vision’s soft accent is familiarly concerned, “I haven’t seen him nor his brother in years…”
“And you’re not out there searching for wherever Tommy is,” Agatha scowls at him, “Just because Billy’s practically married doesn’t mean he wants you all over him.”
“I–” Vision sounds remorseful, “I want to be there for him though.”
Agatha is silent for a beat, before she says, “You can’t make up for all the time you missed. You just need to be there for him now, when he wants you.”
Billy’s heart swells with affection for this old hag but she’s not done, “He’s old enough to make his own decisions, it’s your job as a parent to be there for him when he learns those decisions are mistakes. Let him just enjoy his time with his boyfriend and if he wants you there, he’ll tell you.”
Vision is silent for a beat, but then he seems to relent, letting out a sigh from behind the door, “I don’t remember liking you much in Westview, but thank you.”
Billy retreats from the door as Agatha laughs a witch’s laugh, “I didn’t like you much either but…”
“Everything good?” asks Teddy as Billy settles back down next to him on the couch.
Teddy’s arms wrap around his waist and his nose buries itself in his curls and Billy lets out a long happy sigh, “Everything’s wonderful.”
4. Wanda Maximoff
One would think the first time seeing your mom again would be joyful or… even some form of happy. Billy and Tommy have been trying to figure out if Wanda is dead for the past year or so, so when she rolls up to the final battle against Doom and doesn’t speak to anyone just to absolutely steamroll her way through Doom’s forces, they’re both pleased.
Except she’s either blatantly ignoring them now (which fair, they’re in the middle of fighting) or simply doesn’t know that they’re there. Either way, it’s been extremely awkward running around the battlefield and asking random people in colorful uniforms if “they’re seen a lady in red absolutely wrecking shit.”
Billy’s convinced they should probably wait to talk to Wanda until after she’s done tearing through Doombots. Tommy sort of agrees with that, except it’s really annoying that she still hasn’t noticed that they were there, but to be fair, if he’d been mind-whammied to be in love with Dr. Doom, he’d be pretty pissed too.
It had been awkward for them when Wanda had stood there declaring her feelings for Dr. Doom and half of the Avengers had been either looking at them or their dad’s new body. Billy and Tommy had been grateful she’d been mind-whammied to forget them because if she had noticed that they had been standing there watching her, she would've been embarrassed. Anyways, that sort of explains the rage at which Wanda is attacking the Doombots now, with a vengeance of a woman who has lost so much now snapped out of mind-control.
If Agatha was here, Billy knows she would be laughing her ass off at his mother though.
He and Tommy have been tearing through the DoomBots with the other Young Avengers as well, with minimal injuries. They’d even ran into their father at one point, who had ruffled their heads and told them to be good and to “keep destroying those robots.” It was sweet, even if Billy’s still not used to the all-white form.
Tommy and him are slamming through another wave with Teddy and Cassie, when something lands a couple of feet away from them, washing the entire area with red. The four of them turn around to see that Wanda’s nearby, the powers of the Scarlet Witch flowing around her. The twins, Cassie and Teddy stop and stare as she essentially flattens an entire wave of DoomBots that they were all fighting before turning around as if to leave.
However, before she does so, the new Captain America (he’d told them to call him Sam) comes jogging up to them. Tommy remembers he had been nearby, but to see him in person is a sight in itself. All four Young Avengers straighten formally in front of him.
“Hey kiddos,” he says, but Billy is only aware of Wanda turning around to search for her friend’s voice, “I need you guys to split up real quick.”
“Sure,” says Teddy, pressing his shoulder against Billy’s.
“Teddy and Cassie, we need more powerhouses over there,” he gestures to the side of them, where Ironheart and Shang-Chi are, “Billy and Tommy, can you two—”
Whatever he’s about to say gets drowned out as Wanda looks at them, the names of him and Tommy drawing her attention fully to them. Billy watches Wanda take them in, her eyes flickering over their outfits before they widen and she opens her mouth and —
Tommy places a hand on his wrist and says, “Of course, Captain!” and unknowingly whips them away from the Scarlet Witch just as her eyes fill with tears.
Billy shrieks at him but Tommy can’t hear him over the sound of the wind, so instead, Billy buries his hands in his face and wonders how this family can’t even do a reunion correctly. Goddesses, they’re fucked. This is so stupid. Billy can practically hear Agatha mocking him in her usual smug tone.
He shouts at Tommy for being impulsive when they arrive, confusing the shit out of the White Widow (Yelena), but it doesn’t matter since they still have hours of fighting ahead of them. They can’t exactly have an emotional reunion in the middle of fighting Dr. Doom, even if Wanda or himself could probably will it into existence.
They don’t see Wanda again until late that night once everything is over.
Billy is silently wrapping up one of Tommy’s injuries as Vision watches over the two of them. He’s muttering, IwishTommywasnthurtIwishTommywasnthurtIwishTommywasnthurt, under his breath when he hears a familiar sharp tone.
“Those kids are the death of me, literally!” Agatha mutters from down the hall, “I don’t know how you did it, really.”
“I don’t know either,” Wanda’s voice is small, tinged with her accent, “I didn’t know they were–”
“Alive?” scoffs Agatha, “Those idiots are hard to kill. I would know.”
Wanda seems quiet for a little bit, before she says, “Are they…”
“Okay?” Agatha finishes, then there’s a silence for a bit. Agatha scoffs, “You forget how well I know you, toots. Yeah, they’re okay. Little traumatized, but hey, what Maximoff isn’t?”
Wanda is silent again, before she says, her voice small, “What happened?”
“That’s for them to tell you,” Agatha says and Billy is grateful she’s not diving into his guilt complex with his Mom right now, “I’ve been picking up the slack for you, you gotta get them to open up to you now.”
More silence. Poor Wanda, Billy thinks. By now, the rest of his little family is waiting for her to open the door, all of them watching quietly as the Scarlet Witch faces her family for the first time since Westview.
Agatha’s voice is quiet but he still hears her, “They’re good kids, Wanda. They’ll forgive you.”
Billy and Tommy glance at each other just as the doorknob moves, sliding the door to the side as their mother steps into the room, looking the smallest they’ve ever seen her. She’s staring at them with wide eyes and fumbling Darkhold stained hands and she looks like she’s about to cry.
It feels like coming home.
As the Maximoffs hug it out for the first time in almost 5 years, Billy catches Agatha’s eyes from the doorframe. She’s smiling softly and he pretends like he can’t see her crying quietly as his mom, the Scarlet Witch, buries her face in his curls and tears drip all over his head.
Family is forever.