A/N: I don't usually write RPF, and I'm not sure if this is exactly what you were looking for as far as character bleed, but this one piqued my interest, and the pieces fit together rather well, so here you go.
*****
Lizzie frowned down at her copy of the Infinity War script, flipping back through all of the dog-eared pages where her character had been mentioned so she could double check the dialogue.
Beginning to end, there wasn’t a single mention of Pietro Maximoff.
Anywhere.
Now, she’d already known that Quicksilver wouldn’t be coming back - Aaron hadn’t been signed for a second movie in his contract despite their jokes about doing all their future movies as a duo, and his character was currently on the other side of a losing custody battle with Fox studios - but she’d been hoping for at least a mention of Quicksilver in the script. Some hint that he’d existed.
They’d had Ruffalo’s character Bruce Banner come back into the picture with no knowledge of what had happened since the last film they’d done together. It would have made sense for him to ask about the Scarlet Witch suddenly being a team member, or ask where her twin brother had wound up. Two lines of dialogue is all it would have taken. But aside from a callback to his character’s doomed relationship with the Black Widow, there had been nothing.
Their two characters hadn’t even had time to interact.
Lizzie had honestly expected some mention of Quicksilver back when they were filming Civil War the previous year. It was the immediate follow up to Age of Ultron, after all, and would have been a good opportunity to show the impact of his death of the surviving characters, especially when they were bringing up the tragedy in Sokovia and the casualties that happened in the course of trying to stop bad guys. But the directors had a sub-plot to focus on that only just barely involved her, so it hadn’t really come up.
At this point it didn’t look like he was going to get so much as a callback.
It honestly felt like a bit of a slap to Aaron’s character to have the studio wipe Quicksilver so completely from the franchise after a single movie like that, but she supposed that it was a bit too much of a plot sidetrack to open up that particular box in an already time-constrained movie like Infinity War, especially for a character as unpopular as hers.
With a sigh, Lizzie flipped the script back to the beginning, starting in on her second read-through and trying to ignore the clinging sadness at the fact that her friend’s character had been entirely forgotten.
*****
She had decided to ask Jeremy Renner about it while they were on the set of Wind River one day, after they’d finished recording a particularly heart-wrenching scene and the directors had called a break to warm up from the miserable, biting, Utah cold.
She’d caught up with the man in the break tent, over by the little metal coffee dispensers, clearing her throat a little to announce her presence.
“Hey Lizzie,” the man smiled. You here for some coffee?”
“No, I ah...I had a question,” she started.
“Shoot,” Jeremy replied, carefully filling a little Styrofoam cup from the tap before moving it to the table top.
“Do you...” she’d started hesitantly, searching for the right words so that her request wouldn’t sound too stupid. “Do you ever feel sad for the characters you play? For what they have to go through?”
The older man glanced back over his shoulder at her, his hands occupied with pouring a packet of creamer into his coffee as he studied her for a moment. After a second he shrugged, turning his attention back to his drink.
“I suppose so…? I mean, I guess it really depends what you mean by ‘feeling sad for them.’ Like, pity them as characters? Or feel personally upset because you’re trying to project their emotions?”
“The second one,” she murmured.
Jeremy was silent for a moment as he whisked a stir stick around his coffee, tapping the drips back into his cup before tossing the little strip of wood into the plastic garbage bag that was hung nearby and turning to face her.
The man sighed a little, leaning back against the table and crossing one arm over his chest as he held the steaming Styrofoam cup in the opposite hand, staring down at his boots for a long second before meeting her gaze with a rather serious expression.
“Look, I know everyone is always going on about ‘method acting,’ and ‘becoming the character’... but in all honesty, for your sake, it’s important to draw a line,” he explained. “I try not to ever let myself mix the two. I mean, if you can put yourself in the character’s mindset for one scene, that’s great. But you need to be able to perform a hard disconnect after that, or you’re gonna mess yourself up. Like Heath Ledger,” he said, raising a brow, and Lizzie nodded.
Paul Bettany had told her what Ledger had been like before the Joker role - when the two of them had worked together on the set of A Knight’s Tale.
The thought of getting lost that deep in a character was admittedly a little frightening to her.
“Why do you ask?” Jeremy prompted after a moment, his expression softening into concern. “You starting to feel this script a bit hard?”
“It’s not Jane in specific,” she sighed, offering a little shrug. “It’s...it’s all of them.”
“The other characters in the movie?”
“My characters,” she specified. “The ones I’ve played.”
“Like Scarlet Witch,” he guessed, and Lizzie nodded.
“When you’re always having to become someone who has all of these awful, terrible things happen to them, it’s...” she started, looking away as she searched for the right words to complete her thought. “I mean...am I just imagining that my characters always seem to have a horrible lot in life?”
Jeremy mused for a second, his head tilting a little.
“No, you’re not really wrong…you were in that indie film about the cult escapee - Martha?” he asked, and she nodded. “And that other horror film, Silent House...and you were also the girl in the Oldboy remake, with Brolin?”
Lizzie nodded again.
The man let out a soft, bitter chuckle.
“Yeah, that’s a rough cast list for sure.”
“So I’m not crazy?” she asked hesitantly.
Jeremy shook his head.
“No, you’re definitely on to something. I think it’s because you’ve got really expressive eyes, so unfortunately everyone probably has you pegged for the tragic roles,” Jeremy shrugged, pushing himself to his feet as a distant shout called everyone back to the set. “And don’t get me wrong, you do a damn good job with it - but you need to make sure that you aren’t mixing up Lizzie’s emotions with Jane’s, or Wanda’s, or Martha’s,” he said with a gentle smile, patting her shoulder on the way by. “See you on set, kid. Don’t forget your hat.”
*****
Lizzie frowned down at her script for Infinity War, reading it over for what must have been the tenth time that evening.
It just made no sense.
Why were they having her character kill the one person in the world that she had left, instead of turning around and going after Thanos?
From how they’d described the character to her, the Scarlet Witch could take Thanos out - infinity gauntlet or not. Hell, they had her holding him back single-handed in that very scene!
It didn’t make any sense for them to go for the sacrifice play to try and slow Thanos down instead of simply focusing all their effort on taking him out for good.
But if she was being honest with herself, she knew why the directors wouldn’t let that happen. They would never risk taking the focus away from the “real” Avengers like that. They couldn’t have the main bad guy defeated by someone who had only been a part of the narrative for two movies, and certainly not if they wanted to get an entire second film out of this plot line.
Still, it seemed like a lot of needless cruelty to put her character through.
Especially when it wouldn’t even make a difference in the end.
*****
Being on set during the ending scenes of Infinity War was...rough.
Lizzie tried to keep her chipper attitude, to smile for the others and laugh, but more and more she was noticing that it always seemed to feel a little forced.
The script was just so depressing, it felt like it was creating a cloud of dark, brooding weight in the atmosphere of the filming studio that no amount of jokes or laughter or outtakes could seem to break through.
And it certainly didn’t help that she was surrounded by people like Evans and Hemsworth and Johansson who could throw believable, heart-wrenching emotion into anything they did, and who were all busy acting their hearts out as their characters fought for their lives and watched their loved ones all die around them.
There was a rather morbid humor going around as they all tried to stave off the tragedy of what they were trying to act, but she just couldn’t seem to get behind the “another one bites the dust” jokes, or the bad “snap” puns that everyone was making.
For some reason, Lizzie was just finding it really hard to jump back to her usual happy attitude in between cuts. She kept catching herself staring off into nothing, brooding, while the others all tried to lighten the mood.
It was after one such scene following a particularly exhausting battle choreograph, when the directors had called a half-hour break, that she found herself being approached by Paul Bettany.
The man always looked so odd in his costume, with the combined red skin paint and motion-capture electrodes stuck all over his face, but it was something that she’d gotten used to seeing after so many years of recording together. She glanced up at him as he made his way over to where she was sitting on the ground, trying to convince her stiff muscles to get moving once more.
“Brought you a coffee,” he smiled, offering out the little cup.
“Thanks,” Lizzie replied, shooting him a grin as she pushed herself to her feet with a groan and dusted herself off.
She took the little cup from him, happy to find that it was still decently warm despite the hike from the coffee machine.
Paul took a sip of his own drink, looking around the set for a moment before focusing his gaze in on her.
“Are you doing all right?” he asked, his brows pinching up a little in concern, but not quite enough to offset his friendly smile.
“I’m fine,” she replied out of habit, forcing her smile a little wider as she lifted her coffee cup to her lips once more. “Just a bit sore from getting thrown around.”
The man laughed softly at that.
“Just wanted to check in. You seemed to be getting a bit distant between cuts, there.”
Lizzie nodded in acknowledgement, but didn’t respond.
It made sense that Paul would be the first to catch on that something wasn’t quite right - their characters had spent the most time together in filming, and he’d seen enough of what she was normally like in between scenes to know that something was off.
“You almost done for the day?” she asked him before he could speak again, hoping to prevent any further discussion of her mood.
“I have one more short fight scene with Evans and Shaw that they want to get filmed before we call it a night. You?”
“I think that they’re hoping to get a smooth run-through of this ditch scene with all of us girls before they let us head out.”
Paul nodded, and Lizzie focused on taking another slow sip of her coffee as the silence dragged.
“Well,” the man sighed after a moment. “I had best get going. They need to touch up the diodes before I go back on.”
“All right, I’ll see you around,” she replied with a chipper smile that felt like it didn’t even belong to her. “Thanks again for the coffee!”
“Anytime,” he nodded, turning to walk away.
And Lizzie was quick to bury her nose back in her cup so nobody would see how quickly the smile fell from her face as soon as he was no longer looking.
Empathy (1/2)
*****
Lizzie frowned down at her copy of the Infinity War script, flipping back through all of the dog-eared pages where her character had been mentioned so she could double check the dialogue.
Beginning to end, there wasn’t a single mention of Pietro Maximoff.
Anywhere.
Now, she’d already known that Quicksilver wouldn’t be coming back - Aaron hadn’t been signed for a second movie in his contract despite their jokes about doing all their future movies as a duo, and his character was currently on the other side of a losing custody battle with Fox studios - but she’d been hoping for at least a mention of Quicksilver in the script. Some hint that he’d existed.
They’d had Ruffalo’s character Bruce Banner come back into the picture with no knowledge of what had happened since the last film they’d done together. It would have made sense for him to ask about the Scarlet Witch suddenly being a team member, or ask where her twin brother had wound up. Two lines of dialogue is all it would have taken. But aside from a callback to his character’s doomed relationship with the Black Widow, there had been nothing.
Their two characters hadn’t even had time to interact.
Lizzie had honestly expected some mention of Quicksilver back when they were filming Civil War the previous year. It was the immediate follow up to Age of Ultron, after all, and would have been a good opportunity to show the impact of his death of the surviving characters, especially when they were bringing up the tragedy in Sokovia and the casualties that happened in the course of trying to stop bad guys. But the directors had a sub-plot to focus on that only just barely involved her, so it hadn’t really come up.
At this point it didn’t look like he was going to get so much as a callback.
It honestly felt like a bit of a slap to Aaron’s character to have the studio wipe Quicksilver so completely from the franchise after a single movie like that, but she supposed that it was a bit too much of a plot sidetrack to open up that particular box in an already time-constrained movie like Infinity War, especially for a character as unpopular as hers.
With a sigh, Lizzie flipped the script back to the beginning, starting in on her second read-through and trying to ignore the clinging sadness at the fact that her friend’s character had been entirely forgotten.
*****
She had decided to ask Jeremy Renner about it while they were on the set of Wind River one day, after they’d finished recording a particularly heart-wrenching scene and the directors had called a break to warm up from the miserable, biting, Utah cold.
She’d caught up with the man in the break tent, over by the little metal coffee dispensers, clearing her throat a little to announce her presence.
“Hey Lizzie,” the man smiled. You here for some coffee?”
“No, I ah...I had a question,” she started.
“Shoot,” Jeremy replied, carefully filling a little Styrofoam cup from the tap before moving it to the table top.
“Do you...” she’d started hesitantly, searching for the right words so that her request wouldn’t sound too stupid. “Do you ever feel sad for the characters you play? For what they have to go through?”
The older man glanced back over his shoulder at her, his hands occupied with pouring a packet of creamer into his coffee as he studied her for a moment. After a second he shrugged, turning his attention back to his drink.
“I suppose so…? I mean, I guess it really depends what you mean by ‘feeling sad for them.’ Like, pity them as characters? Or feel personally upset because you’re trying to project their emotions?”
“The second one,” she murmured.
Jeremy was silent for a moment as he whisked a stir stick around his coffee, tapping the drips back into his cup before tossing the little strip of wood into the plastic garbage bag that was hung nearby and turning to face her.
The man sighed a little, leaning back against the table and crossing one arm over his chest as he held the steaming Styrofoam cup in the opposite hand, staring down at his boots for a long second before meeting her gaze with a rather serious expression.
“Look, I know everyone is always going on about ‘method acting,’ and ‘becoming the character’... but in all honesty, for your sake, it’s important to draw a line,” he explained. “I try not to ever let myself mix the two. I mean, if you can put yourself in the character’s mindset for one scene, that’s great. But you need to be able to perform a hard disconnect after that, or you’re gonna mess yourself up. Like Heath Ledger,” he said, raising a brow, and Lizzie nodded.
Paul Bettany had told her what Ledger had been like before the Joker role - when the two of them had worked together on the set of A Knight’s Tale.
The thought of getting lost that deep in a character was admittedly a little frightening to her.
“Why do you ask?” Jeremy prompted after a moment, his expression softening into concern. “You starting to feel this script a bit hard?”
“It’s not Jane in specific,” she sighed, offering a little shrug. “It’s...it’s all of them.”
“The other characters in the movie?”
“My characters,” she specified. “The ones I’ve played.”
“Like Scarlet Witch,” he guessed, and Lizzie nodded.
“When you’re always having to become someone who has all of these awful, terrible things happen to them, it’s...” she started, looking away as she searched for the right words to complete her thought. “I mean...am I just imagining that my characters always seem to have a horrible lot in life?”
Jeremy mused for a second, his head tilting a little.
“No, you’re not really wrong…you were in that indie film about the cult escapee - Martha?” he asked, and she nodded. “And that other horror film, Silent House...and you were also the girl in the Oldboy remake, with Brolin?”
Lizzie nodded again.
The man let out a soft, bitter chuckle.
“Yeah, that’s a rough cast list for sure.”
“So I’m not crazy?” she asked hesitantly.
Jeremy shook his head.
“No, you’re definitely on to something. I think it’s because you’ve got really expressive eyes, so unfortunately everyone probably has you pegged for the tragic roles,” Jeremy shrugged, pushing himself to his feet as a distant shout called everyone back to the set. “And don’t get me wrong, you do a damn good job with it - but you need to make sure that you aren’t mixing up Lizzie’s emotions with Jane’s, or Wanda’s, or Martha’s,” he said with a gentle smile, patting her shoulder on the way by. “See you on set, kid. Don’t forget your hat.”
*****
Lizzie frowned down at her script for Infinity War, reading it over for what must have been the tenth time that evening.
It just made no sense.
Why were they having her character kill the one person in the world that she had left, instead of turning around and going after Thanos?
From how they’d described the character to her, the Scarlet Witch could take Thanos out - infinity gauntlet or not. Hell, they had her holding him back single-handed in that very scene!
It didn’t make any sense for them to go for the sacrifice play to try and slow Thanos down instead of simply focusing all their effort on taking him out for good.
But if she was being honest with herself, she knew why the directors wouldn’t let that happen. They would never risk taking the focus away from the “real” Avengers like that. They couldn’t have the main bad guy defeated by someone who had only been a part of the narrative for two movies, and certainly not if they wanted to get an entire second film out of this plot line.
Still, it seemed like a lot of needless cruelty to put her character through.
Especially when it wouldn’t even make a difference in the end.
*****
Being on set during the ending scenes of Infinity War was...rough.
Lizzie tried to keep her chipper attitude, to smile for the others and laugh, but more and more she was noticing that it always seemed to feel a little forced.
The script was just so depressing, it felt like it was creating a cloud of dark, brooding weight in the atmosphere of the filming studio that no amount of jokes or laughter or outtakes could seem to break through.
And it certainly didn’t help that she was surrounded by people like Evans and Hemsworth and Johansson who could throw believable, heart-wrenching emotion into anything they did, and who were all busy acting their hearts out as their characters fought for their lives and watched their loved ones all die around them.
There was a rather morbid humor going around as they all tried to stave off the tragedy of what they were trying to act, but she just couldn’t seem to get behind the “another one bites the dust” jokes, or the bad “snap” puns that everyone was making.
For some reason, Lizzie was just finding it really hard to jump back to her usual happy attitude in between cuts. She kept catching herself staring off into nothing, brooding, while the others all tried to lighten the mood.
It was after one such scene following a particularly exhausting battle choreograph, when the directors had called a half-hour break, that she found herself being approached by Paul Bettany.
The man always looked so odd in his costume, with the combined red skin paint and motion-capture electrodes stuck all over his face, but it was something that she’d gotten used to seeing after so many years of recording together. She glanced up at him as he made his way over to where she was sitting on the ground, trying to convince her stiff muscles to get moving once more.
“Brought you a coffee,” he smiled, offering out the little cup.
“Thanks,” Lizzie replied, shooting him a grin as she pushed herself to her feet with a groan and dusted herself off.
She took the little cup from him, happy to find that it was still decently warm despite the hike from the coffee machine.
Paul took a sip of his own drink, looking around the set for a moment before focusing his gaze in on her.
“Are you doing all right?” he asked, his brows pinching up a little in concern, but not quite enough to offset his friendly smile.
“I’m fine,” she replied out of habit, forcing her smile a little wider as she lifted her coffee cup to her lips once more. “Just a bit sore from getting thrown around.”
The man laughed softly at that.
“Just wanted to check in. You seemed to be getting a bit distant between cuts, there.”
Lizzie nodded in acknowledgement, but didn’t respond.
It made sense that Paul would be the first to catch on that something wasn’t quite right - their characters had spent the most time together in filming, and he’d seen enough of what she was normally like in between scenes to know that something was off.
“You almost done for the day?” she asked him before he could speak again, hoping to prevent any further discussion of her mood.
“I have one more short fight scene with Evans and Shaw that they want to get filmed before we call it a night. You?”
“I think that they’re hoping to get a smooth run-through of this ditch scene with all of us girls before they let us head out.”
Paul nodded, and Lizzie focused on taking another slow sip of her coffee as the silence dragged.
“Well,” the man sighed after a moment. “I had best get going. They need to touch up the diodes before I go back on.”
“All right, I’ll see you around,” she replied with a chipper smile that felt like it didn’t even belong to her. “Thanks again for the coffee!”
“Anytime,” he nodded, turning to walk away.
And Lizzie was quick to bury her nose back in her cup so nobody would see how quickly the smile fell from her face as soon as he was no longer looking.