Work Text:
i.
Lorna knows of the farm long before she is ever taken to visit it. This does not surprise her - she is new to them, and while the twins trust her not everyone trusts the twins, let alone a new strange girl who can bend metal and will speak to only two of the many at the facility. She spent long enough under HYDRA’s thumb to understand why they might be suspicious and long enough under HYDRA’s thumb for them to be suspicious.
Lorna thinks she is far too aware of these things for a ten year old.
ii.
Lorna stays at the Facility for the first month and a half. She spends most of this time learning Sokovian and then English. She can speak to the twins in German and they’ll listen and understand, but she wants to speak to them in their language, as much as - if not more than - she wants to be able to speak to the Avengers. She’s quick though, at learning, always has been, and her grounding in other languages makes it easier still to pick up Sokovian with it’s mash of Austrian German and Serbian and scattered loanwords from Russian and Hungarian and Polish and Czech.
The twins help her, Wanda especially, showing her how words sound and look and feel in the languages she wants to learn so she can more easily understand, floating scarlet gently through her mind to find what she means so she never feels let down when she cannot find the word - Wanda will understand all the same.
It’s about seven weeks after they found her, as Summer starts to fade, that Barton arrives.
iii.
“Barbecue,” he says to the twins. “Come on, join us. Laura misses you.”
Wanda shakes her head, glances to Lorna. “We have responsibilities here.”
Clint follows her gaze, nods slowly. “Okay,” he says. “Bring your responsibilities with. I think Lila and Coop would like a friend, ‘specially as we’re busy with Nate all the time.”
iv.
The farm is...
The grounds around the facility are nice. Grass, trees, but most of it is close in, an extra boundary, the woods meant to turn around those who cross the fence and bypass the gate so they can’t get close enough. The facility itself is... fine.
The farm is freedom. There’s so much space and for a moment as she steps off the Quinjet it’s almost as daunting as the space around had been when Wanda had carried her to the Quinjet when they freed her from HYDRA.
Then she breathes it in - the smell of the woods, of summer, of mowed grass and burning charcoal and cooking meat - and she smiles, relaxes.
“I like this,” she says shyly to Wanda. They’re holding hands, and Lorna leans briefly against her.
She can almost feel Wanda’s smile from the warm touch of scarlet against her mind.
v.
“Lila!” Clint calls as they draw near. “Coop! Auntie Nat is here!”
Natasha is already ahead of them, several boxes of tupperware under her arms, and the two children that sprint out of the house almost collide with her legs before taking the tupperware and sprinting back to Clint, laughing.
“Hey!” Natasha calls. “Aren’t you gonna say hello?”
vi.
Lorna stays by Wanda as Natasha walks the rest of the way to the house with Clint’s children bouncing at either side, talking at high speed. It’s only when they near where Clint is standing with the grill that they seem to pause, and take note of her.
“Kids,” Clint says gently. “You know Nat and the twins, but there’s someone new today. This-” he gestures to her with a metal spatula and Lorna can feel it, feel the metal in the fields around her “- is Lorna.”
vii.
Lila and Cooper seem as wary of her as she is of them, at first, but Laura Barton scoops her up into a hug as soon as she’s said hello to a cooing Natasha who gladly takes hold of Nate.
“It’s lovely to see you at last, Lorna,” Laura says. “The twins have been saying so much about you, we were wondering when we’d get to meet you.”
Lorna can feel the metal of Laura’s buttons and bracelets, can just about feel the curl of her wedding band and something in her eases as she memorises the sense of another person’s magnetics. She knows the twins - knows Wanda’s rings and bracelets and necklaces and earrings and the copper bangle she never takes off, knows Pietro’s zips and single band of steel at his wrist - and she knows Stark - heavy traces of metal still in his body, the beads of it singing in his arms, always ready to call a suit to him - and Natasha - supporting pins in old breaks and a necklace she never removes if she can help it, always at her neck or around her ankle. She even knows Barton - even more pins in bones than Natasha, the minute pieces of metal so often balanced in his ears so he can hear.
Now, she knows someone new, and she doesn’t feel quite as scared by all the newness.
viii.
She ends up sitting in a tree with her lamb kebab and assorted bits and pieces, and decides against clambering down for cutlery. Instead she waves a hand and knife and fork come flying towards her, rapidly followed by the Barton kids.
“Cool,” Cooper says, watching her sit there with the cutlery bobbing in a field to one side of her while she picks at the kebab.
“Are you like Wanda then?” Lila asks, clambering up to sit next to her. “She can move things too.”
Lorna shakes her head, swallows her mouthful. “Just metal,” she says. “But I can reach further than Wanda.”
ix.
Wanda and Pietro watch Lorna, Lila and Coop perched in the tree. Sometimes Lorna jerks out a hand, pulls some other piece of metal towards them, adds it to the dancing array of shimmering metal around the tree. Other times they hear the children laughing, can see Lorna’s smile and Wanda shows Pietro Lorna’s laughing gold-silver-green mind with a single uncurling strand of scarlet.
“She’s happy,” Wanda says softly. “She likes it here.”
A smile curls Pietro’s lips and he strokes his sister’s hair gently. “Of course she does. All that happened was she had to relax.”
Wanda laughs, pokes him. “Like you did.”
x.
As the sun begins it’s descent the bracelets at their wrists shake slightly, tug them to the tree. Lila is already clambering down, Cooper passing her the cups and plates and cutlery they’d all used and Lorna’s sitting on the branch still, swinging her feet back and forth.
Wanda opens her arms, scarlet curling gently at her fingers, and Lorna spreads her arms, lets the fields around her hum and floats gently down to Wanda’s embrace.
“I like it here,” she mumbles. She stays hugging Wanda for a while before yawning and gesturing at Pietro. “Can we stay?”
Pietro smiles, chuckles. “You know,” he says, “I think I will ask.”