ptahrrific | Mystery Girl intro fic: the first draft

Another behind-the-scenes post for the Cover of Knight universe!

I started writing the current fic, One Plus One Is More Than Two, in a fit of inspiration in April 2023. That's more than a year and a half ago. It's two months before I started posting Reveals by Knight, and a full year before I started posting Here's What You Missed.

So I wrote a big chunk of fic, and then made myself stop. Because it takes place post-HWYM, and I wasn't even close to finished writing HWYM at that point. Really needed to hold off writing until I actually knew all the plot points from the fic it was building on.

(HWYM, meanwhile, I held off a lot of the writing until after I saw The Marvels, so I knew all the plot points from canon I was going to build on.)

Had a full functional draft of HWYM in December 2023. Finally circled back to work on One Plus One again, starting in March 2024.

And sure enough, it needed revisions! (Including 2 whole chapters of lead-up. This became chapter 3 of the posted fic.)

Figured it could be fun to post the original 2023 text. With some director's commentary...

Layla wakes up to the panicky voice of Steven, standing at the window and holding his phone in a shaking hand. "It's really -- I don't think I can explain over the phone -- can you just get here, please, as soon as possible, please!"

He taps the button to hang up.

"Steven?" asks Layla. "What...?"

Steven yelps and drops the phone. "Layla! Morning. There's a thing. It's fine. It's going to be fine. Probably."

"What kind of thing?"

Steven's face goes blank. He jumps at something Layla can't see, then leans on the windowsill, muttering half a word to himself.

When he looks up, it's Marc who talks. "Brain thing. Sorry. It's -- we -- we're going to need Wanda for this one."

"She's the one you were calling?"

Marc is too distracted to answer right away. "What? Yeah. We called Wanda."

"Okay," says Layla, trying to keep up. "That probably means...we should get dressed?"

"Yes! Yeah."

The opening "we called Wanda" conversation didn't change much -- except that, as an opening scene for the whole fic, it was a lot more mysterious.

With the addition of the NYC scenes, Layla has already seen Sailor Moon Knight, and has a pretty good idea this is about her.

So Layla jumps in the shower, throws on some clothes, and makes breakfast. Marc just manages the clothes. He drinks some coffee, only when Layla practically puts the mug in his hand and holds it to his mouth. Sits at the kitchen table and peels an orange, nervously stripping off all the fiddly bits and piling them on a plate; she doesn't see him eating any.

She looks up every time he says something -- but it's never for her, always a fragment of a sentence slipping through from whatever conversation they're having internally. She catches Steven's accent, and a few she thinks are Jake.

None of it is coherent enough for Layla to put together any idea what's going on.

...and then they get up and stalk off to Jake's room. (Originally set up as a study/quiet room for Steven, repurposed when it got impossible to ignore that Jake existed.)

Want to be alone. Got it.

This is the first time I wrote about the guest bedroom/"quiet room". Ended up introducing the idea in a chapter that got posted much earlier -- Reveals 11: London, where Aurora/Jeanne-Marie crash there.

Several little changes in the action. I moved Wanda's entrance to the living room, so (a) Layla can be working on something job-related, and (b) Wanda can land on a couch:

Layla is halfway through stress-peeling an orange of her own when there's a movement in the mirror over the counter...then a whole three-dimensional arm, reaching through like it's a window.

"Layla," says Wanda, grabbing the countertop and starting to haul the rest of her body through. "Are you all right? Where are the boys?"

"I'm fine. They look fine." Layla catches Wanda up under the arms and helps her wriggle the whole way into the room. "And they're panicking about something and they won't say what and I don't have any idea what's going on!"

Wanda lands on the tiled floor and brushes herself off. She's in a plain shirt and a dark cardigan, totally mundane suburban momcore, except for the tiara of scarlet energy glittering over her forehead. "All right. We'll work it out. Take me to them."

Layla takes her to the door, knocks, then waits outside -- she would eavesdrop, happily, but there's nothing to hear -- until Wanda calls her in.

In this draft, Wanda doesn't even ask to mind-read Layla's memories.

That was before I knew they'd go through the Reveals by Knight/WandaVision Holiday Special -- where Layla starts with some reservations about Wanda's mind-reading abilities, but then Wanda uses her powers for various dramatic things throughout the evening, and Layla is really happy with the results.

So now I figure Wanda would ask, and Layla would be comfortable saying yes.

The guys are sitting on the carpet, back against one of the wall-mounted bookshelves, curled up with their fingertips massaging their head. Wanda sits next to them, the crown gone, but a soft glow emanating from her hand where it rests on their shoulder.

"Hi," says Marc's voice. "Sorry. We're okay. It's just." He grimaces. "You explain."

"Come on in, sit down," adds Wanda. "It looks as if...when our minds were separated...a bit of mine might have been left in here."

Layla sinks onto the carpet across from them. "What? How?"

"No idea," says Marc miserably. "Didn't mean to."

"Is it hurting you?"

It takes Marc a couple tries to work up to answering her. "Kinda scared we're hurting it."

"They didn't want to tell you until they checked if I was okay with it," adds Wanda. "I'm going to step in their head for a bit, try to sort this out."

"I guess that sounds like a fair reason," sighs Layla. "But -- you could have told me something. Marc, you had me so scared there."

Marc nods. "Sorry for scaring you."

Wow, this got expanded a lot, huh?

At this point in the writing process, not only did I not have all the details of the HWYM ending worked out...I hadn't come up with the idea to re-split the Minimoffs! (I knew it would end with Team MK convincing Import Wanda "this isn't the kind of mom you want to be," but not that Billy and Tommy would personally join them.)

So first-draft Layla and the guys don't have the clear framework of "Wanda also does a headmate thing, this might be a stray one of hers" to shape how they talk about this.

Wanda looks from his face to Layla's, then says cautiously, "Marc...you know I could bring her in with me?"

Layla sits up straighter. That sounds...amazing. She tries to understand what's going on inside their head, and they try to explain, but if she could visit...

"No!" exclaims Marc. Before Layla has time to feel hurt, he adds, "Wanda, we ripped a piece off you, and you're...you! You can't bring anyone else in. We don't know if it's safe."

"Wanda was wrapped up in your headspace for weeks," protests Layla. "Anyone could get a little...entangled...from that. It doesn’t mean your head has to be dangerous, Marc. I don't believe that for a second."

The face Marc makes...like he can't imagine how his head could be not dangerous.

"I know this is, ah, short notice," adds Layla, trying to give them an out. "You weren't expecting company. Maybe you haven't cleaned up. I...Marc, I would love to see what it's like for all of you, but if it's not a good time..."

"It's not that I don't want..." Marc trails off. "Wanda?"

"Yes?"

"How would you feel about doing a livestream?"

Another hefty expansion. It's in Layla's POV, we deserve to linger on Layla wrestling with her complicated feelings for a bit.

It's good that I didn't try to put that in the first draft, though! Between the Holiday Special and HWYM, anything I wrote about it in early 2023 would've significantly changed before I got to post it.

There's a scene change here, which in the posted fic became a chapter change -- the rest of this is the opening to chapter 4:

"Wanda!" exclaims Steven, running across the sand to greet her. "Good to see you again! Thank you so much for coming, we have been completely freaking out in here."

The camera pans back to show the full group. Wanda pulls Steven into a warm hug; Marc steps through a door behind them. "Is she still...?"

"Still in the car, yeah. Jake isn't taking his eyes off her."

"Show me," says Wanda.

The camera hovers alongside them as they walk down the sand; Steven pokes at it, curious. "And who's this? Looks like that cute little drone Sam Wilson used to have..."

"It's broadcasting," says Marc.

"What, really? To who?"

"Hi, Steven," says Layla.

On the screen, Steven jumps. "Oh! Layla? You can...?"

And then, physically across from her, their body sits up straighter. A wide-eyed Steven takes in the cramped furniture of Jake's room, the way Wanda is meditatively still with her eyes closed while Layla gives him a slight wave, the magically-conjured flatscreen mounted in front of them. There's still a Steven on-screen, but he looks spaced-out and distant.

The view on the screen gets glitchy when Steven's physical gaze falls on it. He watches for a couple seconds before the distant look returns to the body, and the Steven on-screen winces. "Oh, gosh, that's a headache to look at from the outside. Is that just because it's our headspace? Layla, can you see it all right?"

"Some kind of desert?" says Layla. "Big dark lake behind you. Marc and Wanda are wearing the same things their bodies are, but you're in one of those dark blue shirts with the long sleeves."

Steven beams. Looks like there are tears in his eyes.

Back to a scene that didn't need much updating. Mostly it got filled out with extra Layla-POV observations, including "gushing about how happy she is to see Steven['s internal self-image]."

"Maybe we can, uh, do a little tour or something later," says Marc, as a shiny white town car comes into the frame, with a third figure leaning over one of the windows. "Jake! We have company."

They do the introductions again with Jake, who's wearing a light-pink button-down with the sleeves rolled up. He does the same check-in on the physical setting around them, nods at Layla, then says from the screen, "Good thing I wore pants today, I guess. Wanda, hi, she's all yours. Please get her outta here before she wrecks my car."

"She?" echoes Layla.

"Has...she...wrecked other things in here?" asks Wanda, joining him at the side of the car and peering through the tinted glass.

"I mean, no. Not yet. But..."

The camera comes right up to the glass. Layla can just-barely make out what's inside: two rows of facing seats, with a figure hunched in the corner.

A surprisingly small figure...

There's a flash of red light, and the view spins wildly as the drone gets knocked out of the air. A blur of sky and sand whips past, then it splashes into the edge of the water, a couple droplets landing on the lens and blurring the view.

...and this was the point when I thought "yeah, I can't possibly write the actual conversation with Mystery Girl this far ahead. Time to kick the rest of this way down the road."

Good decision! Already in this lead-up, the first draft still has our heroes taking it as a Surprise Reveal that she's (a) child-sized and (b) a "she".

While Wanda has a private conversation with the Mystery Girl, the guys give Layla a tour of headspace.

I did write one piece of that:

"Oh, and this is what our Knight looks like in here!"

The fourth headmate (third-and-a-half?) really is just the suit, from the inside. Propped up on a department-store mannequin. Quiet.

"It's had a rough go, during the whole Regent's Park Hex saga," whispers Steven. "We're trying to let it nap."

...Only to have this part get totally replaced. (Instead, the guys show Layla the empty mannequin, and Marc explains that Failsafe is out of the office.)

And that's the draft!

Around the same time I was writing it, I drew "what if Inner Child was in the MCU?" fanart. Followed by a handful of other Inner Child drawings, and a couple of Picrew edits.

Other people have written MCU-ified versions of her in their fic, and I've only ever seen her described as Latina. Which makes perfect sense -- the canon version is also the same race/ethnicity as the system's physical body!

Specifically, canon Inner Child is a red-headed white girl...which worked out very well here. That way, when I consistently drew her like that, readers could just go "aha, you're borrowing her design from the original comics! And doing a little representation for Headmates Whose Race Is Different From The Body, because those exist! Neat."

And it wasn't a big glaring spoiler for my secret third reason, "when Inner Child shows up in Cover of Knight, she's going to look like this for the specific reason that she yoinked her appearance from Wanda."