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ziggyzolch · 19 days

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Your Prettiness is Seeping Through (Wanda Maximoff x Reader)

Summary: You and Wanda get sent to a mental hospital at the same time. Super huge trigger warning!!!! This story contains talk and descriptions of bulimia, eating disorders (reader) , suicide attempts, depression (Wanda) and mental illness in general. Please read at your own risk!! If you feel like any of these will trigger you, don't feel obligated to continue reading.

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---------------where's your head at?---------------- ❅❅❅

Four times. Your mother caught you four times before she actually showed any concern.

The first time your mother caught you, she had called you disgusting. She threatened to tell your father, not out of worry but spite. She forgot.

You weren’t expecting her to be home so early, and that’s when she caught you the second time. The door to your room was open, which your mother took as an invitation. She stopped in her tracks, then slowly walked out, closing the door behind her, not without an awkward stare-off. She never brought it up.

The third time went about the same as the second.

Right now was the fourth, and this time she was accompanied by your father.

The position you were in was unbelievably compromising. You hadn’t even realized you blacked out until you were startled back into consciousness by your father barging into the bathroom. A gasp came from behind him, your mother peeking her head over his shoulder.

“Oh my god.” Your mother covers her mouth with her hand, your father staring at you blankly.

Crouched on the floor in your underwear, vomit covered tissues surrounded you, the stench of bile seeping from the toilet. “No, it’s,” You sluggishly push yourself off the floor, attempting to pick up the discarded tissues and wipe the vomit off the toilet seat, “Not what it looks like.”

Your mother pushes past your father, touching a sore spot on your forehead. Red coats the tip of her fingers when she pulls back her hand. That's when you notice the little blood pool on the floor, you must’ve hit your head when you fell.

In hindsight, you should have double checked the lock on the bathroom door.

“Please, leave.” You plead.

The worry in your mother’s eyes is nauseating. She had never shown this much care the other times. You figure the forehead injury is what pushed her over the edge, and the presence of your father.

“Clean up, we’ll talk about this tomorrow.” Your father gently places his hands on your mother’s shoulders, ushering her out.

You sighed, picking up the rest of the tissues you placed around the toilet to make cleaning up easier. Using up the entire toilet paper roll, you finish wiping the vomit off the toilet and go to the sink, cleaning up the saliva and vomit off your forearms and hands.

It’s been 3 years since you started. In all honesty, you had no idea why you resorted to bulimia. You had been losing weight fine, there was no reason to. It was after you got food poisoning that you realized how easy it was to reverse everything. Having an addictive personality didn’t help, and by the third day you were scrolling through forums and websites, trying to get worse.

Every girl you knew had some kind of disorder. It was a bond you and all of them shared. You couldn’t talk to the pretty girl about the various types and shades of lip gloss, but you could relate with her on how much you hated this one specific area of your body.

You couldn’t keep up with the STEM girls’ ramblings, but you found that all your mothers had called you fat.

You couldn’t offer any help to the digital artist when she complained about not finding the right brush to bring her idea to life, but you could offer each other weight loss advice.

You couldn’t relate to the girls’ boy obsessed conversations, but you could relate to how you could never be with someone that weighs less than you.

You couldn’t enjoy a plain rice cake for lunch with the skinny girls, but you could relate to wanting to get worse.

Vanity was a shared characteristic of every girl you knew. You’ve seen the fit soccer girl pull at her love handles, the STEM girl pull at her shirt and adjust her posture, the pretty girls sucking in when a mediocre boy passed by, and the skinny girl tearing up after getting weighed at the nurses office, and every girl that got weighed after her. If you could relate to one thing, it was that you all hated at least one part of your body.

So, nobody asked how you lost weight so fast. Nobody asked why your lips were cracked at the corners. You and your two best friends had all developed bulimia independently, which was crazy to you, but also encouraging. They would never report you and vice versa. You were each others fucked up kind of support system.

Right now, though, they weren’t there to reassure you that it’ll be fine.

'You’re not too skinny, your mom won’t find out, the marks on your knuckles aren’t too obvious.'

Right now it was all out in the open.

You were so fucked.

❅❅❅

On the other side of town, Wanda Maximoff was being made to throw up by her best friend. Her hand trembles as she shoves two fingers down Wanda’s throat. She had walked in on her half-conscious on the floor of her bathroom, an empty pill bottle held loosely in her hand. She gags when she feels the ridges, almost throwing up when she grazes her uvula. With one hand still down her friend’s throat, Natasha used her other to pull out her phone and call 911.

Wanda mumbles incoherently as Natasha ends the call and throws her phone to the side, sighing in relief when Wanda finally expels the contents of her stomach. Natasha had known how hard her brother’s death was for her, but she had never expected it to get this bad.

Pietro’s death was devastating for all of them, but they had to move forward. Natasha and Wanda threw themselves into their work, just like the rest of their team. Everybody was so preoccupied by their own missions, their own guilt and their own healing. A year had passed and everybody except Wanda seemed to have moved on. Natasha hated herself for not getting Wanda help sooner. She had seen the empty bottles of alcohol and discarded razor blades littered around Wanda’s room.

Wanda walked in on her cleaning up, face paling before she turned and left. Natasha hadn’t seen any more bottles or razors after that, and it was enough for her to think Wanda was doing better. That she got her wake-up call. She never brought it up, she never offered her any more help, she never asked. Natasha figured Wanda closing herself off even more afterwards was out of embarrassment.

Natasha had grown to be a kind of older sister figure to Wanda. She cared deeply for her and it scared her. After losing the closest thing she had to a little sister, the thought of losing another was terrifying. So, she didn’t get too close, she didn’t ask why Wanda never ate with the team anymore, she didn’t want to care.

Wanda throws up a little more before the paramedics arrive. Natasha looks back and forth between Wanda and the door, rushing to the door when the knocking becomes more insistent. “She’s back there.” She points towards the bathroom, guiding the paramedics to Wanda. Natasha finally gets a good look at her best friend as the paramedics carry her away.

She notices how thin she’s gotten when her gangly legs dangle as the paramedic carrying her rushes out. She notices how her nails had been chewed down to the nub as they placed her on the stretcher. Natasha notices how pale her face is as she enters the ambulance with Wanda. She can’t stand it.

She takes out her phone, texting the rest of the team and getting them up to speed. Everyone except Wanda and Natasha had been on a mission, Wanda must’ve thought she was alone. Natasha sighs, finally turning back to her friend. She grabs her hand and pushes down the nausea at how lifeless she looked. A napkin appears in her vision. She accepts the paramedic’s offer with a little smile, wiping the vomit off her fingers.

This was going to be a long ride.

❅❅❅

Next Chapter

A/N: This is just a prologue, and the story wont be so bleak after this chapter i promise. thank you for reading!

#marvel #marvel imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #mcu fandom #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #the scarlet witch #wanda maximoff imagine #scarlet witch x reader #wlw #reader #x reader #sapphic #fanfiction #fanfic #writing #neutral milk hotel

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ziggyzolch · 18 days

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Your Prettiness is Seeping Through II (Wanda Maximoff x Reader)

Warnings: maybe bungled the medical stuff and process of being admitted, suicidal ideation, aftermath, descriptions of self harm kind of? its not like currently happening. Bulimia and what comes with it. Those r the main things I think.

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-------the shame is manifest in my resistance------- ❅❅❅

“So they’re admitting you?”

You could feel the snow being crushed beneath your weight as you leaned back on your hands. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon and your best friend was sitting next to you on a random curb, taking the pack of cigarettes from your hand.

It was mid-winter. The city streets bustled with the cheer of festive Christmas decorations and the harmonies of carolers. It almost makes you feel better. You never cared for Christmas, or religion in general, but the joy in the little kids’ faces at the snow blanketing the streets, and the laughing of teenagers having snowball fights was cute.

It helped.

You sigh, turning towards your friend, “No, I don’t think so. Most that’ll happen is I’ll be in therapy, I guess.”

She rubs her hands together in an attempt to warm up, “I think I’d kill myself if I got caught. Kidding, you’ll be fine. Probably.”

You scoff, “Thanks,”

You snatched the pack from her hand, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.

You had gotten over the fear of throat cancer a long time ago. It’s more of an expectation than a fear now. Smoking and purging at the same time kind of makes it an inevitability. The thought of death didn’t scare you. Not that you were cripplingly suicidal. You didn’t desperately want to die anymore, you just wouldn’t mind if you did. If you died from all of these habits, it was fine, great even. If not, whatever.

Passively suicidal.

Tomorrow, you’ll have your long awaited psych evaluation. You were shocked that it wasn’t the first thing they’d done. You weren’t that big of a risk anyways. A week has passed since your parents caught you, and you’d been made to take a number of medical tests to determine the severity of your bulimia, or something.

The first one was a general physical assessment, the most simple yet most uncomfortable. You had been made to wear a hospital gown, which you felt was overboard but whatever. They wouldn’t be able to admit you just based off of a BMI measurement, you were sure. You weren’t very underweight, most bulimics you knew weren’t. In fact, most of them were normal, sometimes overweight, but you just assumed it was because they were bad at it. You didn’t feel anything looking at your weight. Numbers mattered, sure, but with every binge and purge, your weight fluctuated like crazy, so you learned to just look for signs of weight loss via mirror.

She read your BMI out loud, you knew it wasn’t low enough to be a concern. You internally celebrated, until you noticed her eyes glancing down to your arm.

Shit.

Burning was your preferred method of self mutilation. Cutting was unsatisfying, messy, and a pain in the ass. Burns look disgusting when they heal though, which was the only downside. The scars are easily passable as cooking accidents and such. When they’re still healing, though, charred, blistered, and disgusting, they’re almost impossible to excuse. Your mom had caught you once, with your worst burn nonetheless. One offer of taking over the chores for the day and she was off your back, already taking her place on the sofa.

The burns weren’t fresh, not at all. Most of them were years old, but you panicked nonetheless. You’ve seen how batshit they get at any sign of self harm. You watched as she glanced towards your arm, then turned back to her clipboard, writing something down. Subtly moving your other arm behind your back, you cover up the bruises on your knuckles.

You also had to go to a dentist appointment. Last time you went, you had just gotten your braces off and permanent retainers in. You still have glue on the back of your teeth from when your top retainer broke, they had never gotten rid of it. With how often it fell off, you were glad the dentist had given up on putting in replacements.

You were more worried about this appointment than the physical assessment. You couldn’t keep food down, smiling with your eroded teeth was uncomfortable, and your breath was horrible. The dentist would definitely notice something, at the very least that you were a smoker. Your mother would hate that more than bulimia.

Honestly, despite all of these effects, you got the benefit of barely having a gag reflex. Which, now that you think about it, doesn’t really matter considering you don’t even like men.

Surprise was clear on your face when your dentist complimented you on the health of your teeth and sent you on your way.

You didn’t really know what the other tests were, something about heart arrhythmias and electrolytes. You didn’t care, you were so over it. It was all bullshit. You weren’t sad. You weren’t suicidal nor were you a danger to yourself or others. You were just bulimic, not on the brink of fucking brain collapse.

All of this was bullshit.

❅❅❅

Wanda’s senses come back one by one. Her ears pick up the soft whirring of machinery and occasional beeping of monitors. The soft footsteps of nurses and patients walking past, the opening and closing of a door as doctors enter, the scratching of their pens against their clipboard. The lingering scent of antiseptic reaches her nose, and the bitter taste in her mouth makes itself known. Her fingers pinch the stiff material of her gown, and she can feel the IV in her arm. Finally, she opens her eyes.

Waking up in the fiery depths of hell would’ve been better than where Wanda was right now. She mumbled curses under her breath as she looked around, taking in the hospital equipment around her.

“Natasha?” She croaked out when she caught sight of her friend sleeping on the hospital chair in the corner of the room. Natasha jumped up, wiping the drool off her chin and rushing towards Wanda. “Oh, thank god.” She sighed, pulling Wanda into an awkward hug.

She pulls back when she realizes Wanda wasn’t hugging her back. “How do you feel?” Wanda cringes at the pity on Natasha’s face. “Peachy.” She turns away, not stopping Natasha when she reaches to grab her hand.

The widow sighs, rubbing circles into Wanda’s hand, making her fingers twitch slightly. They sit in silence, not knowing what to say to each other. Wanda was glad Natasha had found her. She didn’t want to be found at all, but at least it was Natasha.

She was so stupid, so fucking stupid. Of course it wouldn’t have worked. She should’ve just shot herself in the head, like a man. She’d read somewhere that men have higher suicide rates because they carry it out in more extreme ways. Girls usually go for lighter, prettier deaths. Overdoses, slitting their wrists in a rose petal filled bathtub, and such. More survivable, and less of a burden for whoever cleans up after them. Men don't feel the same obligation. So what if it's more work for the cleaners? A shotgun to the head is easier for them, that's what matters. They don't think about how puffy their face would get if they hung themselves, or how awkward they'd be positioned on the ground if they jumped off a building. They don't think about the possibility of surviving afterwards and dealing with the deformity.

Pietro’s lifeless body flashes in her mind.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Wanda finally notices the iron grip she had on Natasha’s hand.

She didn’t want to talk about Pietro. Never. “What’s going to happen to me?”

Her friend looks away, “You’re suspended until you get help.”

“What! No!” Wanda sits up, snatching her hand out of Natasha’s grip, “This was the first time! Bruce tried to kill himself, why isn’t he suspended?”

“That was before he even joined.”

Wanda sighs, “So, what like, therapy for a week?”

Natasha raises her eyebrows, “Wanda, you tried to kill yourself. You need to be monitored.”

“I’m not a fucking child. Jesus, Nat!”

“It’s not up to me, Fury’s orders. Either get help or you’re fired, basically.”

“Don’t I need a psychological evaluation or some shit?”

“Wanda, you swallowed a whole bottle of whatever-the-fuck pills. I can evaluate you right now. You’re fucked in the head, babe.” Natasha attempts to joke.

She sighs in relief when Wanda huffs out a laugh, “So, you’re sending me to the loony bin?”

“Yup. It’ll be great though, perks of being an Avenger.” Natasha places a comforting hand on Wanda’s shoulder.

“How long will I be there?”

Natasha grabs Wanda’s hand that’s picking at her gown, “Until you’re better.”

The sound of a girl yelling stops their conversation.

❅❅❅

“Inpatient would be the best option…”

The ringing in your ears blocks out whatever the doctor was saying. What the fuck. You were not crazy. So what if you were bulimic. You didn’t constantly starve yourself and avoid food so you were chill, but you also were not getting fat, so you were hot. It’s like a win-win.

You’re sitting with your parents, a doctor across from you. He must be a therapist, or psychologist…psychiatrist? Potato, Tomato.

A hand on your shoulder brings you back to earth. Tears are pooling in your mothers eyes, your father is sighing into his hand. “What about my classes? My life!”

“Lower your voice. You aren’t being sent away to the fucking Alcatraz.” Your father grits out.

The doctor chimes in, “I’m sure you’ll be able to do your school work, most institutions let you have books and supervised computer time.”

You push your mothers hand off your shoulder. “Why are you doing this to me?”

She scoffs, “Me? Why are you doing this to yourself!”

“You can’t make me!” Passersby can hear your voice through the closed door of the office.

It was true, they couldn’t really. You were a legal adult, they couldn’t make you do shit. Your mother pinches the bridge of her nose before turning to your father expectedly. You look back and forth between them with an eyebrow raised.

“We won’t support you anymore if you don’t do this.” He finally pushes out.

“What? As if you’ve ever supported-”

Oh. Financially. College and such. Housing and such. Food…and such.

You’re not that level of adult, yet.

“What the fuck-”

“Language!”

“No! What the actual fuck! I’m not sick!”

Your father’s face contorts in anger, “Did you not hear a single word the doctor said? Your potassium levels, electrolytes, and heart are all fucked! You could have a heart attack!” He takes a breath,

“You are killing yourself.”

“What?” You don’t know what to say. Why is your heart beating so fast?

You let out a frustrated shriek, getting up to leave. They don’t know what they’re saying. You storm out of the office, narrowly avoiding passing nurses and stretchers, trying to ignore the sense of dread building within you.

Heart attacks were a lame death. You could imagine how stupid you'd look; jaw wide open, leaning back in your desk chair, clutching at your chest. The door to your room is always locked, so your parents wouldn’t care to check for a while. They’d just assume you were isolating yourself.

Stiffening up in that position, rotting and decomposing. So lame, so ugly.

It didn’t scare you.

Your head ricocheting off a wall interrupts your spiral.

Natasha winces, peaking over the door to find you on the floor, rubbing your head. Wanda had asked her to check what was going on, and you happened to be passing by at the same time she opened the door. You push yourself off the floor before Natasha could help you up. Black spots appear in your vision and you start swaying. You must’ve stood up too fast.

Natasha holds you up as you fall into her for a second, before you regain your bearings.

“Get off me!”

She lets go immediately, raising an eyebrow when you double-take at the sight of Wanda.

‘She’s so skinny.’

Wanda looks up at you, confused when she takes you in. You could’ve been the same weight as her, if not a little more. She doesn’t read people's thoughts if she can help it, but yours were so loud. You blush when she makes eye contact with you, turning and stomping away.

Your footsteps fade as Natasha closes the door, making her way back to Wanda. The widow smiles at Wanda, poking her side, “I think she has a crush on you.” Wanda’s eyes widen, “No way; she said I was skinny.” Natasha tilts her head, “Like in a disgusted way?” The witch looks down at her hands.

She assumed it was envy at first, but you didn’t look like you weighed significantly more than her. Nor was it disgust, based off of how you looked at her.

“Not…really. I don’t know.”

Natasha sighs, “Well, it doesn't matter. We’ll fatten you up in no time.”

She winces at Wanda’s obviously forced laugh.

She didn’t like being skinny, but it was an effect of her depression. It wouldn’t be that easy to reverse. The only reason she was open to this treatment was so that she could go back to work. She’ll just pretend to get better, go back, and work until she can’t take it anymore. Next time, she’ll use a gun. Actually, would she subconsciously stop the bullet with her powers? The pills almost killed her, maybe she’d just lock her door next time. She could pick up smoking, maybe that’d be like a backup. A slow, eventual death could be happening in the background while she found short term options. Multitasker.

“What’re you thinking about?”

Wanda is taken out of her reverie as Natasha pokes at her stomach again. She smiles, shaking her head and curling up into the bed. The older redhead pats her shoulder, “The squad’s going to visit before you leave. Just thought I’d give you a heads up.”

Wanda groans, she didn’t need any more people up her ass.

She stiffens at the sound of sniffling, looking up when she feels her shoulder dampen.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

Natasha leans over her frame, hair masking her face. The brunette stammers, racking her brain for a reply. She’d never seen Natasha so emotional. It was like hearing Steve use slang.

She sighs, curling further into herself and ignoring Natasha. She wishes she could reassure her. Tell her that even the thought of trying again made her nauseous, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t live the rest of her life seeing her brother's corpse every time she blinks.

Living with the memory of Pietro’s death for the rest of her life was worse than any torture she’d ever endured.

She ignores the flashing images as her eyes drift close, falling asleep to the sound of Natasha’s sniffling.

❅❅❅

A/N: I lowk regret writing in in second person but yolo. reply to this post if u wanna get tagged in the next chapter. I hope you enjoyed!

Tags: @mathxa @nikkinss

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