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Thor would probably know better than anyone else how to help her, but he's gone. (And she doesn't know how the Avengers function, but it's strange that Banner and Thor are just...gone. They fought and then left (or never came back, in Banner's case), and the others don't seem to mind.)
So it's Clint she asks first.
“Do you think anyone has ever brought someone back from the dead?”
Clint frowns at her from behind the monitor. They're Skyping, Wanda on her phone, Clint on what looks like a laptop. “No, of course not, what kind of—” He stops. “Wanda. Please tell me you're not trying to learn necromancy.”
Which—he doesn't approve. It's clear he doesn't approve by the set of his face, and maybe it's selfish and she should press more (for Pietro), but she can't bring herself to. She cares too much about his opinion. “I was just curious.”
Clint's still peering at her suspiciously, but she steers the conversation in a different direction, and he lets it go.
Natasha takes one look at her and shakes her head. “I can't help you.” Which, yes, she's the Black Widow, but— “Clint warned me,” she adds, and oh. Alright.
“Are you sure you don't know anything?”
Natasha's face is still inscrutable, and Wanda doesn't know her well enough to be sure, but she thinks her stance softens. “If I knew how, there are people I would have brought back long ago.”
(When she asks Steve, later, he shakes his head. “I don't know. And sorry, Wanda, but even if I knew it wouldn't be my place to tell you.” Which stings, but she understands.
She doesn't ask Clint.)
She doesn't know War Machine or Falcon, doesn't trust them like she trusts the old Avengers. Bonds forged in war and all that.
She doesn't ask them.
(She tries to ask Vision, but—
She can't. She's heard stories of the Infinity Gems, seen the spectre's power, and she's doing the right thing, she knows that, she's doing this for Pietro, but. She's afraid to ask, afraid of judgement. And more than that, she's afraid he'll try to stop her, and she's afraid he'll succeed.)
Stark is a no-go.
It's not that she doesn't trust him, it's not that she still thinks it's his fault (because it isn't, and whatever blame she still places on him is childish, because if it's his fault its hers, too, and so many other people's, and Pietro made a choice that had nothing to do with Stark), but.
She can't. There are something she still can't do.
Natasha talks to Steve, apparently, (either that or he can read minds; she chooses to believe that Natasha talks to him) because Steve finds her before she can find him. “What's this I hear about raising the dead.”
He makes it into a statement, arms crossed and frowning at her, but she can't decide whether it's judgement that's playing across his face.
“I want—” Her voice cracks. She stops to gather herself, then goes on. “I have to at least try.”
She thinks he's going to laugh at her, or try to dissuade her (she knows, from the outside, that it seems completely, utterly insane that she thinks that she can bring Pietro back to life), but he doesn't. When she looks up, there's something she can't quite figure out but nevertheless understands somewhere deep within her playing across his face, a raw, painful expression gone as quick as it appears. “I can't stop you, can I? So I guess you've got my help.”
There are no easy guides to necromancy, it turns out.
The two of them spend hours on the Internet and at the library, but everything she comes across is complete, utter horseshit.
“Bat droppings,” she wrinkles her nose, at one so-called 'spell'.
Steve shakes his head immediately. “No. We tried that once. Enough.”
“Enough,” Wanda agrees. That had been a terrible evening, and she's not ready to relieve that soon. (Pietro's ghost lurks in the corner of her eye, sometimes, urges her to try the bat droppings or, god forbid, the actual horseshit again, but she can only do so much for her brother. The line, she's discovered, has to be drawn somewhere. Maybe her powers will activate that one weird spell that involves, um, eccentric ingredients and sounds completely crazy. Maybe. But she's not going to try.)
(Through all this, she doesn't think of Pietro.
Her bed feels empty when she goes to sleep at night, without him spread out over her, octopus-like and ridiculously warm. Sometimes she thinks she feels ghostly lips kissing her, but of course she's daydreaming. She turns to him to share a joke, and he's not there. Her memories of his scent and laugh and smile are as vivid as ever and fading fast, both at once.
(And it's silly, and selfish given everything else, but she also misses the sex. The sex was good. And she can't make herself sleep with anyone else, even to get rid of the tension that sometimes coils inside her stomach, because that person wouldn't be Pietro.)
She can't afford to think of any of that, not if she's going to bring him back. She needs to stay focused. So she pushes it all away and dives into the research.)
The thing is, the Internet is wacky and wild and has so many ridiculous theories, and they definitely can't try all of them, since neither of them are immortal and therefore don't have an indefinite amount of time. (Well, she's not immortal. She's not sure what the serum's done to Steve, but this is one of the things no-one in the Avengers compound talks about.)
“This isn't working.”
And yes, Steve's right, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, like looking for a tiny grain of sand in a haystack, really, but— “I can't.” Can't stop, can't give up, can't accept that Pietro's dead.
“I know.”
And this is one of the other things they don't talk about, so she ignores the guilt-grief-anger in Steve's voice. “You don't have to help me, though. This is my task.”
“I'm not leaving you with this on your own, Wanda. But there's got to be—” He stops. Then, slowly, “I have an idea.”
Captain America has access to a lot of ancient artefacts most civilians wouldn't be able to even look at from a distance, on account HYDRA, apparently.
And they try that, too, old books that look like they're falling apart, things that people claim are 'objects of power' but are just derelict heirlooms, flying across Europe and the Americas and Asia (and a few times to Africa and Australia, too).
But there's nothing.
(Or, at least, nothing that she knows works. Steve talked her out of the virgins thing.
(She hadn't actually been going to go through with it, but his face as he tried to convince her that no, Wanda, you can't kill virgins for their blood and I don't think it's a good idea to ask them nicely had been hilarious. It was the first time she laughed since Pietro's death.))
They're in a university library going through a thick book, a copy of a thousand-year-old text that is itself some two hundred years old, and she's using her powers to flick through the pages of the book (so their fingerprints won't stain the fragile pages, when she realizes.
She stares at the red tendrils wrapped around the book, snaking across the paper, and thinks, I've been so stupid. The answer has been in front of her, in her, all along, an answer so simple that it hadn't even occurred to her to think of it.
“Wanda?”
There's concern in Steve's voice, and she blinks, realizing she's spaced out. When she speaks, she has to work to keep her voice from trembling in excitement. “Steve. I think I've found the answer.”
They fly back home, and start to train.
It takes months.
It takes months of training. And training is now Avengers missions, the gym, fetching a cup of coffee, everything.
They spar, and, at first, she ends up black and blue all over, even though Steve's holding back. She learns, though. She learns control through sparring, through learning to defuse bombs and extract civilians from sticky situations, through making Steve's hair stick up in a specific way (he grumbles about it the entire day; Natasha and Sam both find it hilarious), through making the plants in the gardens grow faster.
Nine months after Pietro's death, she and Steve decide she's ready.
In the end, there is no ritual. No virgin's blood, no bat droppings. Her abilities don't work that way.
She goes outside, because she doesn't want to accidentally blow up the building. (For the same reason, she hadn't allowed Steve to watch. She doesn't want his death on her hands, too.) She stands next to the patterned circle Thor left on the ground, because she's afraid that she might end up reanimating Pietro in Australia if she doesn't focus on a specific place, and the circle is as good a place as any.
(And Australia would be fine, obviously, if it meant Pietro was alive, but. She'd like it very much if he turns up where she can see and touch him.)
When it comes down to it, the resurrection (and it feels strange calling it that, but there's no other word for it) itself is simple. All she does is close her eyes, and—
Come back. Come back, Pietro. Live.
She feels her power gathering inside her, a deep breath being sucked in and held, a vortex of pure energy.
And still, she knows, it is not enough. She needs more.
She pours all her anger and love and hate and rage and pleasedon'tleavemePietroplease into the storm raging inside her (around her? Right now, she doesn't know), all the emotions that had been fermenting for the past nine months.
But it's still not enough, and she can feel her grasp beginning to slip, and if she lets go—
She won't let go. She can't let go.
And so she reaches for memories, for precious moments—
—“Pietro, Pietro, look!” Tugging at her brother's shirt, pushing a handful of dirt with a with a worm embedded inside it into his face—
—“He won't find us, Stark won't find us, you're safe, we're safe.” But she hadn't believed herself, and he hadn't believed her, and no matter how many times they repeated the words to each other it still wasn't the truth—
—Chanting in the streets, holding signs, holding hands, they'd make Stark pay—
—“We'll get our country back,” Pietro had promised, when she faltered, when she doubted, because “This is never going to end, Pietro,” but he hadn't believed that, he'd put his arms around her and held her in a tight embrace—
—A turn of their heads, an accident, and then kissing like their lives depended on it, their mouths fiery against each other's—
—“New York, too?” “Screw them,” Wanda had spat, “Screw them all,” Pietro had echoed, and they'd plunged into the fray, screaming and bloodying their knuckles—
—The first burst of power running through her veins, and suddenly, Pietro moves, and it's glorious and it's beautiful and it's revenge—
—But then the damned Avengers—
—And betrayal, Ultron's betrayal, and that one moment she'd thought they could finally belong, finally have peace—
—PIETRO NO—
And she lets everything loose, channels all the energy into one thought:
Pietro. Live.
“Pietro,” she says. “Pietro.”
Inside the circle, a body appears.
It worked, she thinks, even as she runs to him, drops to her knees next to him. And it's Pietro, Pietro as he was, before, silver hair and lanky body and the scar on his neck and all.
And—
“Wanda?” His voice is croaky and hoarse, but it's his voice, and suddenly she's crying, crying as she hadn't cried since his death, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Wanda, why are you crying?” He reaches up, his eyes still closed, fumbling blindly for her face. And somehow that makes her sob even more.
She leans down, and, through her tears, she kisses him. It feels like coming home.
“Wanda?” His voice is croaky and hoarse, but it's his voice, and suddenly she's crying, crying as she hadn't cried since his death, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Wanda, why are you crying?” He reaches up, his eyes still closed, fumbling blindly for her face. And somehow that makes her sob even more.
She leans down, and, through her tears, she kisses him. It feels like coming home.