#The Visit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

messedupfan · 1 year

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The Visit

Summary: Y/n and Wanda get an unexpected visit.

A/N: Imma need y'all to trust me with the direction of this series. Which I know y'all usually do! Let me know what you think! Loving the responses thus far! Enjoy!

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It was a quiet morning as you and Wanda prepared your lunch, a synchrony that only years of harmonious marriage can explain. You were humming to the song that was playing on the radio, trying not to cut your fingers off as your eyes were glued to your wife's swaying hip as she stirred something in one of the pans on the stove.

"Will those carrots be ready for me in time, darling?" Her voice sounds, laden with teasing, her back still turned to you.

"What, you can read my mind now?" You ask back in a playful tone, blinking a few times as you stop staring at her ass so bluntly, and the brunette lets out a hearty giggle.

"For the record, I always could." She turns to you to say, an eyebrow raised. "But I don't need that when I can't hear any noise of your knife moving."

You let out a soft chuckle at her watchfulness, shaking your head lightly in amusement. "Not my fault you're so distracting." You defend yourself good-naturedly, but before you can go back to chopping the vegetables, your wife's hands hold your face, pulling it towards her. Her smirk meets your own gently, and you let go of the knife to hold her by the waist, pulling her closer to you. When you were about to deepen the kiss, a weird noise caught your attention.

The two of you exchange curious glances at the squeaking noise, such as an energy field or loose electrical wires. When you approach the window, however, you notice it's neither. On a dark purple metal platform are two women whom you know well. But you have never seen either Jean or Raven using such a strange device. The two women step off the platform, looking around cautiously. And when the metal piece disappears with the same strange noise, you frown. "Stay here."

You don't wait for Wanda's response to start walking, and the brunette watches you move to the door that leads to the back garden with her arms crossed in front of her chest, her eyebrows furrowed, full of concern. When you pull the wood piece open and step outside, the brunette takes her attention back to the window, to the backyard where the two women, attracted by the sound, turn their faces to you.

"Jean?" Your question is uncertain as you stare at the redhead, hesitant. But the girl's expression breaks into a smile as her eyes fill with tears.

"Y/n!" She lets your name out in a sob as she runs to you, wrapping her arms around your neck tightly. You frown in complete confusion, but you hug your friend back anyways, your arms around her middle. You look at Raven for some kind of explanation, but the blonde girl just casts you a sad smile, opting to stay a bit far.

"Thank god. You're alive." Jean says cheerfully as she pulls away, her hands on each side of your face, and you're suddenly feeling very awkward at the whole situation, not really knowing what to say or do. Your wife, who watches the scene attentively from the kitchen window, is not liking it at all either, and clenches her jaw as she follows the steps you took a few minutes ago.

You laugh with confusion. "What? Of course I'm alive, what the hell are you talking about? Are you okay?"

"Jean? What a lovely surprise." Wanda's voice sounds from the door before Jean can answer your questions, her eyes cautious. The redhead pulls away from you immediately at the sight of the other woman, looking a bit disappointed, which only makes you more confused.

"I'm afraid that's not the case, Wanda." Your friend tells your wife with a sad smile, and you frown with concern.

"What's going on, Jean? Are you alright?"

"I'm not your Jean." She tells you softly, and as your eyebrows furrow in confusion.

Your wife raises hers in disbelief, her head tilting slightly, "Their Jean?"

"I-I mean, the Jean you know." The redhead rushes to explain, her cheeks red from embarrassment. "I'm from another universe." The information sends Wanda's jealousy away with the shock, and you widen your eyes at the revelation.

"We better talk about this somewhere more private." Raven speaks for the first time before you can fill the other one with questions, her eyes scanning the surroundings.

You do the same in reflex, before looking at the two of them, and inviting with a motion of your head, "Come."

You and Wanda exchange apprehensive glances as you lead the multiversal travelers into your house, your hand on her lower back protectively. Neither of you notice how Jean and Raven exchange glances - the redhead with a sad one to which the blonde offers an empathetic smile. When you're in the kitchen, you rest your palms on the marble countertop, eyeing the strangers - if you can even call them that. But not long after, you are firing your first question. "Why are you here?"

Jean and Raven exchange glances, as if deciding what to say next. Even though your anxiety is growing to alarming levels, you do your best to remain calm, trying to control the rhythm of your breathing just like Wanda had taught you throughout the years. And, not long after, the two women's eyes find yours again. "It's an emergency." It's Jean who breaks the silence first, and Raven nods her head in agreement, casting you an almost apologetic smile. "We wouldn't have come if it wasn't."

Now it's the turn of you and Wanda to exchange glances, both your eyes loaded with apprehension before you look at the travelers again. "Okay... What is it then?" You ask, uncertain, but the girls' eyes drift to your wife.

"I... I think it's best if we talk in private." Raven's suggestion makes you tense your jaw tightly. Who are they to show up out of nowhere in your backyard - quite literally - and suggest such a thing?

"Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of my wife." You hit back with determination as you move closer to Wanda, wrapping an arm around her waist, watching with harsh eyes as the two women shift on their feet uncomfortably.

"It's important, Y/n." It's Jean who insists, her tone pleading. "The safety of the Multiverse depends on it." The redhead adds, and all you can really hear is 'Wanda's safety depends on it.' The information makes you back down from your hostile posture, your gaze turning to Wanda with an expression full of doubt.

"Go." The brunette instructs sweetly, one hand on the side of your face, stroking your skin as she smiles at you with a reassuring smile. "I'll finish lunch. You're more than welcome to join us." Your wife turns to the visitors as she says the last part. You're not really sure if she means it or if she's just being polite, but you nod your agreement, and the two girls smile as they thank you for your kindness. Before you lead them out of the kitchen, you turn to the brunette again, and give her a long kiss on the cheek that makes her smile grow wider.

In silence, you invite the two women to follow you to the study room, and the conversation only comes back once you close the door behind you. "Have you been having nightmares?" It's Raven who asks, and you can't help but let out a short laugh.

"Are we starting a therapy session right now?" You hit back with a humor perhaps too harsh, making the blonde sigh wearily.

"I've been having nightmares for a while now. Terrible ones." Jean tells before you can apologize for your rudeness, and you look at her with curiosity. "They're not exactly the same, but pretty similar. Of me dying- no, being killed. By the same person. Always. The same woman."

"Wanda." You breathe out, disbelieving, the flashes from your own nightmares coming to your mind, visions of that redheaded woman who, despite having the same face and voice as your wife, in no way resembles her. "But, how-"

"Dreams are windows to our multiverse selves." Raven answers your question before you can finish asking it, and, noticing your furrowed eyebrows, she adds. "If you're dreaming about it, it's because it's happening to you in some other universe."

You can't help but laugh at the absurdity, shaking your head in disbelief. "That's impossible." You attest with your hands on your waist, but the blonde doesn't back away.

Instead, she asks. "What happens in your dreams after you die in them?"

"They end." You answer with a shrug of your shoulders, not really understanding what that has to do with anything, but Raven nods eagerly.

"It's because the bond is over. There's no way to connect to the mind of your other self if it no longer exists." She explains matter-of-factly, but you scoff once more with your eyes closed, taking your finger to the bridge of your nose to contain the sarcastic comments you want to make.

You think about the possibility that the multiversal trip might have burned out her brain. "This doesn't make any sense."

"Have you dreamed about me? About... Us." It's Jean who asks this time, and when you open your eyes again, you frown at her tear-laden eyes, looking at you with expectation.

"Jean..." Raven calls softly, but the redhead ignores her completely.

"Have you?" You clench your jaw at her insistence, not understanding how any of that matters. But you force your brain anyways, and you end up remembering a particularly vivid dream that lived hidden in your mind.

"I... I have, yeah." You let her know, swallowing drily, and the redhead's breath hitches, blinking to hold her tears back.

"How was it?" She asks a mixed tone of expectation and hesitation, her eyes never leaving yours.

"Jean-" Raven tries again, a hand on her friend's forearms. But the redhead just pulls her arms away harshly.

"It can be a memory!" The girl says angrily, but she soon takes a deep breath to calm her nerves, and looks at you to explain more gently, "it can be proof of what we're saying."

"I... I don't remember much of it," you stutter lightly, more because of the interaction of the two women in front of you than because of the memory of the dream itself, "but... We were at the Institute. It was one of Ororo's classes and we decided to skip it. We were wandering the halls until Logan walked by and saw us. We ran to get away from him and ended up in the pool area. We pushed each other in the pool and stayed there for a while until I said I was cold and you said-"

"Kiss me to make it better." Jean completes with the exact same words, her voice so low you can barely hear her. But you do, and you widen your eyes in complete shock. "It was our first kiss." The redhead tells with a nostalgic voice, wiping her tears away with the back of her hands. Raven moves closer to her to hug her friend.

You remain frozen in place, shaking your head in disbelief, "This doesn't make any sense."

"Y/n, we're sorry to dump all this information on you. But you need to know." Raven approaches you to place her hands on your shoulders, but you keep shaking your head, your eyes finding it hard to focus on any point in the room.

"But why?" You manage to ask finally, after some deep breaths, and the shapeshifter offers you a smile before pulling away.

"That brings us to our first question. Have you been having nightmares?"

"I have," you answer her this time, nodding your head in confirmation. "Like you. The same woman, almost every night." You add as you look at Jean, who was standing back a bit, trying to recover from the previous intense moment.

"They're the one." Raven attests as she looks to the redhead, who nods in confirmation.

"The one what?" You ask, your eyebrows furrowed once again, and the blonde woman takes her gaze back to yours.

"Do you know what a Nexus Being is?"

"I need to sit down." You grumble as you stumble back until your leg hits the couch, and you sit there with your elbows on your knees to support your hands that fly to your face. You feel the cushion next to you sink in.

"Nexus Beings are the keystones of the Multiverse." Raven explains, and Jean's next words sounding by your side lets you know she was the one who sat on the couch as well. "We affect probability, the flow of the Universal Time Stream."

"We?" You remove your hands from your face to look at her, a mixture of challenge and obliviousness, but the redhead offers you a small smile.

"Every universe has its own Nexus Being, to anchor the reality and keep their universe balanced. Safe." She explains gently, "I'm the Nexus Being on mine. And you are on yours."

The information makes you scoff in disbelief, your hands back on your face. "My god."

"Without a Nexus Being, the entire universe collapses, ceases to exist." Raven decides to keep explaining, even though your head is starting to hurt a little at the amount of information. "There has to be a Nexus Being at all times. When one dies, their vital energy is immediately transferred to another being, whether they have been born already or not." Jean hums in confirmation at her friend's words.

You raise your face to them once again to ask, "Why does this matter?"

"The Scarlet Witch," you have no idea what that name means, so Jean decides to elaborate, "the woman in our dreams, that version of Wanda... She's the Nexus Being of her world." You can't help but look away to the floor, unable to believe that Wanda - your sweet, loving, wife - was the cause of it all. "As we said, Nexus Beings can affect probability, manipulate reality to our will. But only up to a point, or their own power will turn against them." You furrow your eyebrows at the last sentence, not really knowing what she means by that. "The human body wasn't made to hold the load of all the vital energy in the universe." Raven explains as she notices your confused expression, and you swallow drily once you get what she means, nodding faintly. And Jean keeps talking. "This is why Wanda is looking for the Nexus Beings throughout the multiverse, to be able to break through these boundaries. And then, well... She kills them."

"But you said that when we die our vital energy or whatever is transferred to other people." You comment with confusion with your eyes on Raven, who nods her head in confirmation.

"It is. But she found a way to absorb them to herself." The blonde tells you.

Before you can ask any questions, Jean is holding your hand over your lap to emphasize her next words. "Y/n, without the vital energy, the entire universe collapses. She's not only killing the Nexus Beings. She's killing everyone from their realities."

"We have to stop her." Raven insists, looking at you pleadingly, making you let out a long sigh as you run your fingers through your hair. This is definitely too much.

"But how?" You ask finally, unable to see a way to defeat such a threat. Jean and Raven share a restless look, letting you know they are as clueless as you are.

But, in the end, the blond shrugs her shoulders. "We're trying to put together as many Nexus Beings as we can. We can't beat her alone, she's too powerful. But, who knows, as a group..."

"You gotta come with us, Y/n. We need you." Jean insists, and for a moment you consider your options, your gaze shifting between the girls. On one hand, the whole thing seemed absurd. Considering that all that information is in fact true, the possibility that you will fail looks too big. On the other, not to fight is to sign your death warrant. And, the worst of it all, the death warrant of your Wanda. That alone was enough for you to decide.

"Boy, Wanda's gonna be mad at me, I promised not to go on any more missions." You comment with a weak laugh, trying to lighten the mood. Would it be wrong to joke when you had such an eminent likelihood of everything going wrong? No matter what the correct answer to that question is, both women offer you equally faint smiles in response, looking relieved that you have agreed to help. But before you can talk much more about it, there are knocks on the door.

"Lunch is ready." Your wife says as soon as you open the door for her, her eyebrows furrowed at your pale expression. But you offer her a reassuring smile, kissing her forehead before letting her know you were coming.

"Let me be the one to tell her about it." You ask once Wanda is gone, your voice low so that only Jean and Raven can hear. "I... I don't want to worry her any more than she already will." The two women nod in understanding and the three of you go back to the kitchen, where the brunette is arranging the pans on the table.

Jean and Raven thank her for the meal, complementing the smell and the taste once they try it. Wanda thanks them with a smile and rosy cheeks, and you can't help but smile as well at the sight of her. But your smile soon falters as the conversation you just had with the visitors replays on your mind, and you let out a tired sigh, finishing chewing to place your hand over hers on her lap. "Wands, I'll have to go with them."

The brunette doesn't look at all pleased by the information. But more than uncomfortable by what you just said, she looks completely confused, and you take a deep breath, exchanging a look of confirmation with the other women in the room before telling Wanda about the whole thing - making sure to leave out and lighten what you felt was necessary so that she wouldn't be so nervous. The way her fingers tremble under yours lets you know it's not working.

"I'm coming with you." It's what she says after you're done talking, making not only you but also Jean and Raven widen their eyes in surprise.

"No, you're not." You tell her gently, but Wanda is determined, shaking her head eagerly.

"I'm not letting you go there alone if it's so dangerous!" Her tone is final, and even though you've never won a fight with her in the past, this time you're willing to try.

"Honey, please. I got this." You assure her, a lopsided smile before you joke, "I know you hate it when I say it, but I'm way stronger than you."

"Only in this universe apparently." She hits back on a grumble, and you sigh heavily at your failed attempt to try to soothe her. "I know her. It's me! If there's someone who can understand her and make her stop, that's me." The brunette insists, her eyes locked on yours in a challenge that you cannot let her win. You will not lose her.

But before you can tell her as much, Raven is speaking. "She might have a point."

"Don't agree to this." You ask tiredly, but the blonde doesn't back down, exchanging a look of confirmation with your wife. "Jean?" You turn to the redhead for backup, but the woman only offers you an apologetic smile before shrugging her shoulders. You shake your head, breathing heavily through your nose as your despair turns to irritation. "No. No, you-"

"This isn't your call to make." Wanda's voice is firm as she interrupts you, but it's also gentle, her hand on your face to reassure you. You close your eyes as you let out a sad sigh, lowering your head in defeat. Wanda calls for you softly, and waits for you to look at her to speak again. "For better and for worse, right?" She recalls your wedding vows, and you feel your eyes burning as you smile at her.

You're certain that the only time you felt more afraid than you do now was during the battle against Thanos, when the Mad Titan stabbed your wife - then-girlfriend - in the chest. An act that would have killed her had you not, in an act of desperation, used the infinity stones in your custody to conjure a spell to save her. The magic was so intense that it not only freed your beloved from all that suffering, but also disintegrated Thanos himself, putting an end to the most violent battle ever faced by Earth.

As a result, however, your body ended up absorbing all six stones, which were now part of your entire being. You don't remember how you did it, or how it all happened. All you know is that you woke up twenty-nine days later feeling more powerful than you had ever felt before, and next to a smiling Wanda, with tears of relief streaming down her cheeks.

This is the second time you have feared losing her, and at this point, you already know that this is your greatest weakness. You would do anything for her, no matter what, no matter how much you would get hurt in the process. Her well-being was your one and only goal. But, that didn't mean that you could make her choices for her, and you knew that very well. So you sigh, and nod your agreement, even if, deep down, you feel you shouldn't.

When lunch is over, Raven and Jean offer to do the dishes, to which you promptly disagree. But while the argument was going on, the redhead made a swift movement with her finger. In the next second, all the dishes were cleaned and back in their places. All of you laughed lightly, and you rolled your eyes when Wanda told you you should learn some useful trick like that. You whisper in her ear that you know many tricks she likes, and the brunette pinches your rib lightly in rebuke, her cheeks rosy as she walks away, telling you she needs to talk to her family to let them know you're going to travel.

As you run your gaze around the living room, you notice Raven looking out the window, eyeing the surroundings as if expecting an attack at any moment. The scene doesn't put you at all at ease, so you quickly divert your eyes to another point ahead. Near the fireplace, facing some picture frames, you see Jean. But instead of looking at the photos, the redhead's eyes are on you, averting them a second after you catch her staring. You decide to walk towards her.

"It must be hard... Seeing this." You comment as you look around, regarding what she had with your variant in her world. You know you died there from how she interacts with you, but you decide not to ask about it, figuring this must be tough enough on her.

"Yeah, I'm getting used to it." The redhead comments with a sad smile, her eyes falling to the pictures - many happy moments you shared with Wanda throughout your life. "In every other universe I visited you are together." The comment makes your eyes widen in surprise, your cheeks turning red. But you don't really know what to say about it, so you just grumble in understanding, following her gaze to the pictures. "It's better than the ones you're dead, of course..." Her voice carries a bit of humor under the huge amount of sadness, so you decide to offer her a smile. She smiles back before shrugging. "But, I don't know, it just got me thinking."

"About what?" You ask with curiosity, and her smile is sad as she looks at you again.

"Thinking that maybe you only were with me in my universe because you didn't have Wanda." The redhead explains, the hurt in her eyes matching her voice. You think she's right. Wanda is your person, your soulmate, if such a thing exists. But it's not like you're gonna tell her that, of course.

"Nah, I can totally see your Y/n being in love with you." You hit back, which is true, letting out a smile as Jean furrows her brows at you. "I had a major crush on you during our years at the Institute."

"You did?" She asks, incredulously, her expression lighting up when you hum a confirmation. "What happened?" The redhead asks with curiosity, her eyes locked on you as you shrug your shoulders.

"You never really paid attention to me." You tell her simply, but the answer makes her laugh through her nose in disbelief.

"No way." She shakes her head, and you let out a laugh.

"I'm telling you. You were too busy dating Scott Summers."

"Me?! Dating Scott?!" Jean sounds genuinely offended by that information, and you laugh some more, finding it amusing.

"What, you don't like him in your universe?" You ask with a mixture of humor and curiosity in your voice, and the redhead grimaces in complete disgust.

"No! The guy is a dickhead!"

"Well, he's pretty much a dickhead in this one too, I don't know what you ever saw in him." You decide to joke, because you prefer to see her laughing than to see her crying. But it doesn't take long for the redhead's laughter to stop, the sadness returning to her face.

"I know you're not mine to lose, Y/n," her tone is low and hurt, and her eyes drop to the ground before finding yours again, glistening with tears, "but I still don't want you to die. So let's be careful, okay?"

"Of course." You assure her softly, offering her a gentle smile. It's so weird, this situation. Ten years ago, having her look at you this way was all you wanted most. But now, you feel absolutely nothing. Nothing but sorrow and empathy for the permanent sadness in her eyes. The redhead smiles back with gratitude, and you watch as she moves away from you to sit on the couch with her hands on her face.

"Y/n?" Wanda's voice sounds then, and you spin on your heels to give her your full attention. "We should pack our things now." The brunette suggests with a stern face, the cell phone she used to talk to her family still in her hands

"Of course." You agree as you flash her a smile, but your wife doesn't reciprocate it before she turns her back to you and walks toward your shared room. You frown at her strange behavior, but follow her shortly after, telling the other girls, "we'll be right back."

"It looks like you finally got what you wanted, huh?" She says as she sets her travel bag on the bed. Just by that simple action and her pace as she grabs clothing lets you know that she is upset with you.

"What do you mean?" You’re confused as you shut the bedroom door behind you. Not understanding where she was coming from.

"Jean liking you back?" Wanda replies sharply as she folds a shirt in her hand and drops it into the bag in front of her in a hostile manner. Instead of neatly setting it down, like she normally would to make sure there was enough space for other essentials.

"What-" you can barely get the word out before she cuts you off.

"Don't play dumb, you know what I'm talking about." She shoots a glare in your direction before she disappears into the connected bathroom.

Finding her behavior odd, you scoff as you follow her. Stopping at the entrance and leaning against the wall you watch her grab things. "That was ages ago," you try to defend. "Wanda-" you try to block her path but she shoves past you, causing you to sigh and rub above your eyebrows as you think. You take a couple steps towards her but you don’t get too close. Staring at her back, you find it ridiculous that with everything going on right now, this was a problem. “After all these years together? All of this time that I’ve spent loving you, everything we’ve been through. You really believe Jean is still the person I want to be with?”

She spins to face you with a hand on her hip and a stern pout on her lips. Even after thinking it over, Wanda shrugs. “It wasn’t my name that you doodled all over your notebooks,” she reminds you with a pointed look. You drop your head to the side as you try to find a way to respond to that. “The years you spent waiting for her to notice you, I was waiting for you to notice me.” Now you really had no words. She knew everything about you, there was no way to defend yourself without making her question everything. “Besides, I heard what you said to her. About the other you choosing her over me.”

This time you get close to her and try to take her hand but she pulls it out of your grasp and sits on the bed as tears begin to burn her eyes. The thought that she could have been without you, without this life, in another universe because someone else had you breaks her heart. “Wanda,” you start softly as you kneel in front of your wife. “The woman lost the love of her life. I was almost in her shoes once. The worst thing that anyone could tell me is that what we had wasn’t ever real. Especially if it was coming from someone that shares your face,” you have both of your hands resting on her thighs to ground her to you instead of the thoughts that were upsetting her. “She’s already had to see the person she loves, not choose her in any other universe. Would you have liked me to bring her more pain by telling her that I know in my gut, the version of me that loved her would have chosen you over her?”

She places her hands on top of yours, making you hopeful that you were breaking through her irrational thoughts. However, Wanda was still being stubborn. She pulls your hands off of her and stands to busy herself with packing again. Feeling at a loss, you decide to take the focus away from the past and from the conversation she walked in on. There was no way to rewrite history and there was clearly no reasoning with her. So, you had to remind her of the present, remind her what’s at stake.“Where is this coming from? We’ve been friends with the Jean we know for years and you’ve never gotten upset like this,” you start as you rise to try and be heard by her.

Wanda stops when she finds a present she had been hiding from you in one of the drawers. She shuts it and sighs as she settles her mind enough to answer you. “I don’t know, seeing that look on her face, knowing that she is missing the you that was hers… I was in that place, you know? When no one knew if you would wake up again. They were trying to prepare me to accept that you might be gone for good and I…” she wipes a few of her tears as she looks at you again. “I guess, she just reminds me of my fears. That I could have been her if our world didn’t need you. If I were in her shoes, I probably would have tried to take you from her.”

Her admission makes you smile lovingly, “I don’t doubt it, my love. Clearly there is a version of you out there without me and look at all of the damage she is causing.” You stand in front of her again and this time when you reach for her hands, she lets you take them. “The time we have right now… I don’t want to worry you with worst case scenarios but, with this mission there is no guarantee of how things will turn out. You know it and I know it. So please, let’s not waste a second of it being upset over things that are out of our hands.” This seems to get through to her and she agrees in a warm embrace.

“You’re right,” she says into your shoulder. “We need to focus on the mission. It doesn’t look like there’ll be room for mistakes with this one.” Wanda tightens her arms around you to let you know how much she needs you. “You do what you need to but please, remember that you are still human. If what the Ancient One warned you is true, you cannot use too much of your power. Even if it might feel like it at some point, it's not the only way. There has to be other options. Even if you might not think there are. You have to come up with something else. Let someone else be the hero. I cannot lose you,” she begs you to make the promise. You sigh through your nose, not certain that you can make it and keep it. The last thing you ever wanted to do was make an empty promise to your wife.

So you don’t make it. You pull back just enough to rest the palm of your hand against her cheek. Your soft, loving gaze is met with one of concern and fear. “I love you, my љубав," you tell her softly, smiling when she scrunches her nose in that adorable way you love.

"Your Serbian is getting better." She points out almost proudly, making your smile grow wider.

"I have a really good teacher." You hit back with a shrug of your shoulders, her little laugh relaxing your every muscle. You close your eyes before meeting your lips with hers, feeling her sigh against you as she matches the kiss at the same slow pace. “Let’s finish packing so we can get this over with already.” Wanda nods and promptly returns to the task as she fights the tears from your lack of compliance with her request. She knew the kind of person you were, the type to lay everything down on the line in order to save everyone. She loved that about you, normally. Admired it, even. However, with a mission of this volume of unpredictability, she almost hated that part of you that would give everything if it saved the world. Especially if it protected her.

The Institute

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adarkrainbow · 7 months

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Spooky season fairytales (7)

And finally, my last "spooky season" post! With seven posts of movie (and series and books) recommandations, plus additional reblogs, you'll have plenty on your plate for this Halloween!

And for this final post, I will go into the world of horror movies. I am here speaking of pure horror movies - not fairytale movies, not dark fantasy movies... BUT! Horror movies that were inspired by or heavily references fairytales.

Let us begin with a classic of classics when it comes to fairytale horror:

The Night of the Hunter, the 1955 classic movie. While technically not a horror movie per se, as many call it a "thriller" or a "film noir", it is very close to the horror world, and it heavily draws from fairytales!

Everybody knows by now the plot of this famous masterpiece. Black-and-white, heavily drawing from the silent movie era, "The Night of the Hunter" tells the story of how a dangerous serial-killer pretending to be a preacher worms his way into the household of a widow and her two children, hoping to find the money the deceased husband had hidden... As he kills the mother, the two children have to escape his clutches and wander throughout the American countryside in search of a new hope, while being hunted down by the evil figure...

When Charles Laughton decided to adapt the novel this movie was based off, he called it a "nightmarish mother Goose story". And, faithful to this description, he made sure his movie would be a dark Mother Goose fairytale. A tragic family drama forcing children to flee through the wilderness... Young ones fleeing from their wicked step-father, and seeking comfort in a kind grandmother-figure... A dark story filled with threats and creepy sights that ultimately ends well... Most significantly, the antagonist of the story, Harry Powell, played by Robert Mitchum, is actually designed to be the fusion of all three most famous male antagonists in Perrault's fairytales.

As a sinister serial killer who murders his new wife in a story about greed, he is Bluebeard. As a monstrous father-figure who hunts down two children across the wilderness to kill them, he is the Ogre. And finally, he is the Big Bad Wolf - but in this case the references are more to the early 20th century cartoons involving the character, since some of the mannerism of the villain, coupled with dark-humor slapstick scenes, clearly evoke the cartoonish Big Bad Wolf one can see in pieces such as Disney's Little Pigs cartoons.

Overall, this movie would be best described as a "realistic take on Perrault's fairytales". Remove the magic and the intemporal nature, and you've got this story.

Psycho, the 1960 classic of Hitchcock, also deserves to be on this list. Just like "The Night of the Hunter", it is another black-and-white, stylized thriller-movie about a serial killer, adapted from a novel it overshadowed. But whereas Night of the Hunter was purposefully designed as a fairytale, Psycho has little to do with it.

So why is Psycho on this list? Because while it wasn't designed as a fairytale piece, it ended up being a "fairytale horror movie". You see, many before me have pointed it out and analyzed it, but "Psycho" reuses a setting, a plot and characters that are eerily similar if not completely parallel to fairytales. The most notorious example is that Psycho is usually called a "modern Bluebeard". Indeed, we are yet again dealing with a male figure murdering women in the context of romantic/erotic relationships, and a forbidden room (well, a forbidden house) hiding a female corpse... [Note: Given Psycho's huge success, I do not think I need to put spoilers warnings]. In a lesser way, Psycho can also be read as a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. A charming male figure seemingly harmless and playful charms women... only for them to end up being murdered. The erotic undertones and the fact the male murderer little dresses as an old woman accentuates the Little Red Riding Hood parallels.

But more generally, one can tie up this movie with a lot of fairytales that all share the similar canvas of - the seemingly sweet young man is a murderer killing women (for example Grimm's The Robber Bridegroom, which also has an elderly mother-ifugre), or the mother-in-law is a deadly antagonist (the second part of Sleeping Beauty where the prince's ogress-mother wants to kill Sleeping Beauty).

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sees us leave the world of more "quiet" and "suggestive" black and white movie for the gritty, disturbing, repulsive and yet morbidly poetic and nightmarishly oniric world of... what stood between the slasher-to-be-coded and the redneck-horror-yet-to-be-created.

Did you know that this movie began as a Hansel and Gretel project? Oh yes! It all started out with a project to make a movie out of Hansel and Gretel, a dark and adult movie. As this project was settled, the influence of "Night of the Living Dead" reshaped the creation, and an attempt at re-creating the feeling of this movie was worked on... Then it was just a question of adding disturbing real-life facts, from the social rot of the Rust Belt to the life of Ed Gein, and you've got this classic of horror. The Hansel and Gretel origins of the movie still remain - the heavy topics of food and cannibalism, the treatment of young adults as cattle, teenagers being lured into the depths of the woods to a seemingly peaceful but in fact deadly house... You can also read in it a dark retelling of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Youth enters an unknown house uninvited and must flee when the three beasts that inhabit it come home... Except the beasts are here human serial-killers.

But the thing that should be highlighted with this movie is that... Despite being a disturbingly realistic piece with no actual magic or fantasy in it - it is the story of disturbed, mentally-ill serial killers in the depths of the dying American South - this movie has something magical to it. Or maybe "eldritchian". Most people agree that this is an actual Southern Gothic movie, and there was a fascinating video essay on Youtube about the cosmic horror aspect of this movie, and some would even classify it as a "folk-horror" piece... And there's a reason to all that.

Once again, this is probably due to the original direction of the movie as an "Hansel and Gretel" story, but despite being a "realistic" piece, the movie makes itself oniric and unreal. It uses very simplified and thus symbolic presentations and framings of the world that evoke this dark fairytale feeling - the clear cut between night and day, the unfolding of the story between a sunset and a sunrise, the limited locations that are the road - the house - the woods. There is a true "passage into the Otherworld" as the characters leave the sane, rational, civilized and human side of Texas to enter the disturbed, insane, monstrous and nocturnal domain of the antagonists, where very human taboo is systematically broken. There is something very Lovecraftian in the madness and degenerescence presented here by the murderous family, which adds to the "cosmic horror/eldritch horror" feeling when you consider the ritualistic way the various murder and grave-robbings are performed, and the extremes nature imposes on the character (scorching hot sun, pitch-black night), and the astrological foreshadowings...

Finally, the antagonists themselves are just fairytale monsters. They are modern ogres, human yet monstrous dwellers of the desert woods, beast-like man-eaters all too disturbingly human. They are the robbers killing and eating people in the woods from the Robber Bridegroom. And while they are "realistic", as in they are just insane and (possibly) inbred serial-killers, there is so much mystery left around them that they become almost supernatural. We never know their names. We never know their exact relationships to one another. We never exactly know where they came from and how they came to be as such. Just like the monstrous families of trolls and giants in fairytales, they just happen to be here, and are just known by their role. And of course, the presence of the vampiric impossibly-still-alive grandpa adds the final touch to the nightmare that truly breaks off from reality into the full uncanny valley of the fantastic in its literary sense.

Two for the price of one! Dario Argento's duology of "Suspiria" and "Inferno". (Yes there is a third movie forming a trilogy, "Mother of Tears" or "The Third Mother", but we will NOT talk about it).

These movies are staples of Italian horror, of the supernatural side of the giallo genre, and of witch horror movies in general. Suspiria is now a well known classic : a young American girl gets enroled into a German dancing school, but strange events, mysterious disappearances and gruesome murders led her to invastigate strange, eerie and oniric conspiracies - with the final twist (now what the movie is famous for) being that a witch coven is located in the school and killing people in their occult rites. Inferno, the sequel, deepens the mythology brought in Suspiria: after his sister mysteriously disappears in a New-York building, a young man comes to investigate the reason she was so afraid recently. A book about the existence of three evil witches hiding their dark magic within three different buildings - and the one the young man's sister lived in might have been one of those buildings...

These two movies follow the typical codes of the giallo (bloody murders with intentionally-unrealistic effects perpetuated by masked assaillants with a whodunnit structure), while having Argento's typical touch (the use of unnatural red, blue, green and yellow lights giving the whole movie a surrealistic and oniric tone, very unique soundtrack choices), and ultimately delve into occult and esoteric horror as they are filled with a web of evil witches, human sacrifices, deadly curses and terrifying undeads, all inspired by the Three Mothers invented by Thomas de Quincey.

However another very important if not fundamental aspect of Suspiria should not be ignored: it is a Snow-White movie. One thing that tends to confuse people when watching Suspiria is why women in their 20s such as the protagonists are acting extremely childish. The answer: they were supposed to be children. The movie was originally written to have a child protagonist, and all the students in the dance school being children - but since the murder of children as a no-no in 70s Italy, it was decided to make them adult... However Argento wanted to make a horror version of Snow-White, about an old witch targetting and murdering young girls to gain more power. So what he did was keep the original dialogues, and then create a strange set where everything was of the wrong size - too great, too tall, too big, with for examples door handles at the level of people's chests rather than hands - to have the adult protagonist look and feel like a child inside this strange academy. More obviously, Argento heavily references Disney's Snow-White in his movie - from the use of heavily saturated colors and of extremely unique, colorful, almost surreal architecture, to the presence of a neon-glass peacock in the witch's lair designed after the peacock motif of Disney's Evil Queen.

Inferno, the sequel, as a continuation of Suspiria, also has a basis and roots in a fairytale - this time Hansel and Gretel. But the references are more sparse and trivial than in Suspiria, where the fairytale theme was very present. You have a sister and a brother lured into a witch's house ; it is strongly implied if not outright confirmed that the witch's coven are cannibals ; and the movie ends up with the witch burning down. But beyond that, Argento wanted to focus much more on the "Three Mothers" mythology than to make a true fairytal rewriting.

[A warning: if you want to watch Inferno there are depictions of animal abuse. So be warned, it isn't for animal-lovers. Well the guy who performs the animal abuse gets brutally murder as a consequence, but still.]

"The Shining" is one of my favorite horror stories, and I am the first to admit it isn't a fairytale story at all. It is a familial tragedy about alcohlism, isolation and domestic abuse, interwoven with the supernatural story of a little kid with powerful psychic abilities being targetted by the ghosts and demonic entities inhabiting an hotel symbolizing all that was corrupted and wrong with upper-class 20th century USA... And the movie is certainly one of the best horror movies of the second half of the 20th century.

But there is something in Stanley Kubrick's movie that is not present in Stephen King's novel. Or rather it is present in just a few lines of the entire novel, and Kubrick had the great idea of expanding it as a recurring underlying, secondary theme... Fairytale references.

People have already written articles about it, but Stanley Kubrick decided to insist and even add fairytale references across his movie, so that, when you decide to look at the story under a certain angle, you realize there is a "dark fairytale" undertone to it. Of course, the famous behavior of insane-Jack as the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs, with explicit references, comes to mind. But there's also the fact that The Shining is a familial tragedy about a parent figure becoming a monstrous threat - something very common of fairytales. The supernatural notably acting by having warning messages coming from nowhere and previous victims appear to the future ones recall of how in fairytales involving murderers (like Bluebeard variants, or The Robber Bridegroom, and other variants) there will always be disembodied voices, or ghost of previous victims, or talking trees warning the protagonist. And the line of Wendy evoking "breadcrumbs" to find her way through the kitchen is working with numerous other elements of the story: the labyrinthic Overlook Hotel works as the forest in which children or girls get lost ; there is the same clear rich vs poor plenty vs hunger dichotomy as in Hansel and Gretel, the woman in room 217 has been compared to a fairytale witch, and some even pointed out that the strange decoration of the Overlook rooms can evoke whimsical candy-buildings.

Of course, the movie also offers clear subversions of typical fairytale tropes - a wicked father figure rather than the wicked mother ; or how the benevolent helper called in the role of the typical "Woodsman" actually completely fails...

So, while not intended as a horror-fairytale, Kubrick's The Shining is a great horror movie which happens to have an underlying fairytale angle you can read the movie under.

And let us conclude with... The Visit! Another movie by the very controversial M. Night Shyamalan, who produces among the best and worst movies we saw recently.

I haven't watched The Visit yet, though I plan to - but I have to include this because of how obvous the fairytale references and the fairytale theme is. Two children at sent by their mother to live with their estrange grandparents. The grandparents are nice and kind, though a bit strange, with bizarre rules and a possible start of dementia. However, the longer they stay there, the more the children start noticing a much more disturbing and dangerous behavior from their grandparents...

This movie is basically a real-life take on two fairytales intertwined together - Hansel and Gretel (with explicit references such as the grandmother asking the children to climb inside the oven to clean it) and Little Red Riding Hood (the same feeling of arriving at your grandmother's house only to realize there is something WRONG with your grandmother). And the whole thing comes with a final twist that actually clearly set this movie in the line of so many American urban legends such as "The killer on the backseat", "The old woman with hairy legs" or "The clown statue".

Ad what's a urban legend if not a modern-day fairytale? Or rather a modern day orror fairytale...

#spooky season fairytales #spooky season #fairytale horror #horror movies #dark fairytales #suspiria #inferno #texas chainsaw massacre #the visit #shining #the night of the hunter #psycho

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