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"Love stole in to a fair child dreaming
’Mid birds and butterflies—
He kissed her innocent eyes.
He held his cruse o’er her bright head gleaming;
The wine and oil to her feet went streaming;
And the child was a woman wise.
Love crept in to a woman gazing,
Who saw, with eyes of pain,
A garden wet with rain.
Her faded face with his right hand raising,
He wrapped her in rainbow vesture blazing;
And the woman was young again."
~ Lilian Wooster Greaves
With the painful ease of long practice, she waited for the healing to settle in; to reknit together tissue and marrow and bones and sooth over what had been lost, what was even now empty and bleeding and wanting.
Wanda had undergone this before: the process of grief, the long road to healing. First, with her true parents -
(Her mother she only remembered as curls the colour of the earth and soft brown eyes filled with sadness. But she had gleaned from her mother's mind when she was too young to even process what she imprinted: silver-white hair and eyes so grey that they were the colour of steel, with an embrace that smelled of cold iron and winter hearths. Wanda knew this man to be her father, just as the broken little girl he bent and ruined in a fruitless effort to save had been her – their - sister. She'd once asked Pietro if he remembered their birth-family, but he did not – he could not, perhaps – so Wanda kept that memory safe for the both of them, making sure to keep close the love and belonging that had been theirs before it was taken from them.)
- and then with those who had raised them. The Maximoffs had been good people, full of smiles and laughter and joy, who took in the orphaned twins from the sanctuary in Wundagore as if they were their very own. Their memory was a special place in Wanda's mind, a place where she would retreat to remember the beauty of her foster-mother's smile and the warmth of her faster-father's laughter. It was a sanctuary, a refuge - somewhere she could retreat when the other part of her grew fit to smother, fit to overwhelm. You can turn the earth itself inside out, something terrible whispered inside her. You can alter time and reality itself to bring back what is yours, but she could not, she would not . . .
So she made fists of her hands and breathed in deep . . . once and twice and then over and over again. Inevitably she would recover, she knew on a logical level, but in the here and now she felt only missing and grief and Pietro. She missed him as a lung would miss its brother-organ in a shared chest, and she did not yet know how to go on without him at her side, without the comfortable familiarity of his mind grounding her, protecting her, loving her.
(They had been born with hands still locked through hands, she had been told, and they had grown much the same. She did not know his likes from her own, nor her dislikes from his; his thoughts, moving so quickly, but so breathlessly, had been her saving grace so many times before, just as his arms had held her through all of life's tragedies and ups and downs with the promise of safety and the assurance of belonging and love.)
Now . . .
Now she has found a safe-haven, but she was slow to define it as home. Home was Pietro; and home was the loving memory of a place he had died trying to protect. This . . .
. . . this was a team – her team - she told herself sternly, and she would fold herself into them until she was once again apart of something. Such was what Pietro would want of her, and she would, she would do right by his memory.
. . . only, doing so proved to be difficult, at times.
Tony Stark called them the Cap's Kooky Quintet, and sometimes the term amused her – causing her to lift a sardonic brow where someday a smile would truly smile. She enjoyed the presence of comrades – true comrades – and she enjoyed the way their minds wove and bound together about each other to fluctuate against her senses as one. There was something soothing about being in their midst, and even when their loud and brash ways – their painful Americaness - rubbed her raw and drained on her, it was ever the knitting of their minds that soothed those moments over, and made them inconsequential.
When their team had down-time, they spent a great deal of it together. Captain Rogers was ever stressing the importance of bonding, and the strength that came to brothers-in-arms through that developed love, but while Wanda would often join them in the rec room, she would very rarely join them – instead sitting out of the way with a deck of cards in hand while her comrades milled and conversed around her.
And there she would fill in the missing place at her side with something more. Something new.
She looked, and saw where Clint – who was at the Facility for the weekend - was destroying Sam and Rhodes in a game of darts. Even though they knew they could not win, they tried anyway, and they laughed at their inevitable defeat with good humor and grace. She watched, intrigued by their interaction, wondering at the simplicity of it as she often did.
(She appreciated the feel of Clint's mind, even though she was careful not to linger over his psyche for too long – able as she was to see where wounds had been gouged in deep and heartlessly inflicted. It was as if some great beast had lashed through his mind, and wondrously – fascinatingly – he had healed over those wounds. He had moved on. Stronger than his psyche – which was even now flinching from her gentle prob, soothing old wounds where he would ever be unaware of her meddling - was the love he had for his wife, the adoration he had for his children, and the contentment he knew for the simple ways of home and belonging. His mind was a balance Wanda craved, and hoped, someday, to define for herself.)
Steve and Vision were facing each other in a game of chess, though they each looked up to glance at their comrades when they turned especially loud. Steve's brow was knit in concentration, and though he won but rarely, he still gave the other man a challenge – for Vision did not have it within himself to hold back, and there was the strategist of a general next to Steve's trappings of a soldier. It always pleasantly amused them to see the times when Steve took the android to the very end in their games, and this was looking to be another one of those times.
(While Steve's mind was another source of comfort – proof, again, that the most grievous of wounds could be endured and healed from, while still holding such an amazing hope and love for the world he strove to protect – it was Vision's mind that ever continued to draw her as the moon to the tides. She had never met another with a mind as fluid as his, as currents in the deep of the ocean, and she could let those currents sooth over her psyche her for hours on end. He was fast becoming her favored companion amongst the Avengers, appreciating how he understood the peaceful simplicity of shared silence, and when he did speak . . .)
She blushed at the thought of his voice, knowing her appreciation for his smooth tones and careful way of speaking. Though his knowledge was limitless, his fascination for the world around him was often as the wonder of a child, and Wanda found herself looking at the world anew through his eyes. Often were the times they spent together in the roof-top garden – something she had helped her foster-mother with in their home, and did not, could not, forget – and spoke of everything from the shape of the stars to the exact parameters of their powers. He explained his manipulation of density as best as he could – that which enabled him to fly and phase through objects - thus allowing her to imagine, and through that imagining -
- there had been honest surprise on his face when she had managed the feat of flight herself, and she kept that expression secret and safe within the halls of her mind, ready to use it as a weapon when even those on their own team foolishly called him robotic and unfeeling, absent of flesh and blood and feeling.
For she knew that he was anything but.
(Even now Vision could feel the restless search of her mind, and though he could not touch her in return, he nonetheless arranged the flow of his thoughts in a soothing and rhythmical pattern. Wanda closed her eyes at the unthinking caress, feeling it linger where she missed the most, and, wanting, remained empty.)
The only one not joining in on the merry-making was the Widow. She instead sat with her body perfectly angled – allowing her to watch both the game of darts and chess, with her sharp eyes missing nothing in between. There was a slanted smile on her mouth as she muttered jibes in Russian for only Clint to hear – though Steve knew bits and pieces, and Vision understood her every word, even though he would rarely comment on such. But her fondness for teasing her friend was a joy that was too tight about the edges – to brittle to be wholly real - she, like Wanda, having a wound at her side, and struggling to fill in that empty place with those things new and dear to her once more.
And, as Natasha watched, Wanda looked on, and pondered.
(Hers was the most difficult mind for her to access – all but for him, who was verdant and violent and lashed out with a nearly animistic force as she wrestled with his psyche. While there was a logic to the human mind, there was too much logic to hers – as if she had been created with steel grids and precise patterns to follow – even more so than Vision, who was forged from the ground up in the most literal of ways. Everything natural and organic had been stripped from her, and filled, instead, with . . . Wanda flinched, but could not finish her own thought, vivid as those gleaned memories still were. Yet, the beauty of Natasha's mind came from where she left that rigid formating behind. Hers was the natural of the wild growing through some great abandoned building – with vines reclaiming steel and deeply rooted trees striking through walls and concrete foundations to find the light of the sun again. She had put herself back together as a whole being – reclaiming the girl she had never been allowed to be - and Wanda respected that. She admired that.)
The truth was that Wanda envied that; and sought to copy it even now, in her own way.
As it ever did on these evenings, the time came when the laughter and easy teasing around her was too much, and she could take no more. Without saying a word, she took her leave, and went to find the training rings deserted for the late hour. Remembering what the Captain – and the Widow – had been drilling into them, Wanda took out her frustration and discontent on the punching bags and stationary targets – bleeding her body of a poison, she liked to think, until, eventually . . .
After one particularly violent blow, shining crimson with the might of her hexes, she stepped back when the bag fried to a crisp. She blinked, for while the provisions here were built with their unique talents in mind, there were still many times when they had to change out the equipment they ruined for that new.
You can set time and space and reality itself alight, something again whispered within her. These different, these others, these lesser, who did not keep up on the path of human evolution – they are nothing in the face of what you can be, what you can cause to become. Such can be your right, your divine duty, even, and if you would but reach, even he you can return -
- but such thoughts were not hers, not truly, so she pushed them aside. Hooking her jaw, she flicked her wrist to cause another bag to float over from the supply rack and hook itself up, when a lone pair of clapping hands sounded out behind her. She turned, surprised that she had not heard – nor sensed – her audience. That was, she was surprised only until she saw the Widow leaning against one of the concrete pillars in a deceptively lazy manner, with her arms crossed and her mouth smiling that familiar slanted smile.
“You are getting better,” Natasha approved, and Wanda felt herself flush, taking even the smallest of compliments as the true praise they were from a mouth such as hers.
“Better is not good enough, though,” Wanda shrugged to say. She turned from Natasha in order to move on the punching bag again, not bothering with her red flares of energy in favor of the simple joy of striking something without fear of her foe bruising or striking back.
(Yet she remembered Pietro being the first one to show her how to throw a punch, how to defend herself in those awful first days on their own, and - )
In a flare of scarlet energy, the bag went up in flames again, and she scowled, having to break off her roundhouse kick mid-execution, and nearly stumbling for the misplaced energy of the motion.
“At this rate, you'll outdo the Cap in the rate you go through punching bags,” she could all but hear Natasha raise a red brow in grim amusement.
“If that will get me where I need to be, then so be it,” she rolled her shoulders in a shrug, feeling her fingertips thrum with energy as she gestured, and another bag flew into place.
“And where exactly is that?” Natasha asked. She sounded, Wanda thought, truly curious for her answer.
And Wanda exhaled. She gave a half-hearted push against the bag, and then another. The rubber shell gave dangerously against her glowing palms, but she had better control this time, or so she thought.
“I want . . .” she swallowed, and had to start again. She closed her eyes, and rested her brow against the bag. “Not only do I want to prevent what happened to me . . . to Pietro . . . from happening to anyone else. But, those we could not save . . . those we failed . . . ”
Those deaths were on her shoulders, she thought, for she could still feel remnants of them, sticking to her psyche like leeches - ill as she had been in controlling her powers in those early days. When they had first volunteered for Hydra's augmentation, it had been, in part, to prevent Baron Strucker from choosing those he would torment and twist next from the frightened and bewildered youths he had collected. They were stronger, they simply were, and a part of them had known that they would survive, no matter what – even then. Yet, by their hands, as their new-found gifts settled and they were then turned on others . . . there had been no choice, no choice, she tried to cling that truth as an anchor in a storm . . . and yet . . .
“There were times when I felt like a monster, even before what they did to us," Wanda whispered. "I was always different . . . something uncanny, something more. They just found what was already there, and set it free.”
She ground her teeth together, knowing that her accent was thick and heavy as a result of her darker emotions. Vision had downloaded her tongue, and could speak the language of Sokovia in its entirety. Natasha knew Russian and Ukrainian enough to understand most of what she said, though, and she slipped into the comfort of Russian now – the language close enough to that of her home that she . . .
“This comes from a long experience with monsters: you are anything but,” her tone started wry, but it ended firm. There was a line to her voice, made of steel. “Monsters do not feel guilt,” she declared with a low sort of certainty. “They do not want to better themselves for others . . . they do not miss when their loved ones are gone.”
Only her last few words were whispered, and Wanda glanced at the other woman, then seeing her own missing place – her own looking to her side to find only her shadow waiting in return. Wanda swallowed, remembering her time in the Widow's mind - finding that one room like a garden in the ruins and wild of her psyche, and within that room . . . There had been such a light there, and such a warm hope for where that light may lead . . .
“You do not believe that yourself,” Wanda returned, knowing the truth of that, in the very least.
“But I am trying to,” Natasha shrugged to say. “And I have experience persuading others in this area,” her eyes glittered with a dark humor as she said so.
. . . and there was something so easy about her then – something so natural about her accepting what she was, scales and fangs and all, and wanting for something different, something more. Wanda stared, as if she could understand simply from her eyes alone.
“And, what's more than that,” Natasha continued, unknowingly following the wings of her faults, “you are not the only one on this team who has felt so - who still feels so. Clint's done some unspeakable things in the name of freedom and protecting his country; and Thor was as one of the berserkers of old before he learned true compassion and the mercy of restraint. The Captain has the same burden on his shoulders that Rhodes and Sam do – those who they couldn't save, those who fell besides them . . . the innocents caught in the crossfire. Tony's demons are those you are intimately acquainted with, and understand better than most . . . Then, Bruce . . .”
Natasha swallowed, and had to start again. She could not wholly summon her words. “And you know all about me,” she left her own gaping wound alone in favor of tapping the side of her head to say. “You've seen everything: every nook and cranny and unflattering detail, yet you are still standing calmly next to me – with not even a hex waiting to be called.”
“I wouldn't – it's not even a thought,” Wanda said reflexively – reinforcing her point without first meaning to. “Your mind . . .” her voice tapered off, unsure how she could put such an indescribable thing into words, but suddenly wanting to try, “It is extraordinary – beautiful, even. What they built . . . and how you define your own being now. It's awe-inspiring, and, someday . . .”
I hope to be something like you, she thought, but did not say.
“Lots of hard work, patience, and time got me there,” Natasha admitted, and Wanda knew that to be true – knew her memories of her first days with SHIELD as clean water being poured over a field of red, struggling to fully wash the stain away. “That, and a friend or two, with lots of trial and error finally did the trick,” she finished. “Which is what I am trying to say: when sifting through the auras of others is not enough for you, I wanted to let you know that I am here. I don't accept teammates easily to start,” family, she heard in place of team, “but when I do, they are mine. I protect what is mine – even from themselves.”
Wanda was silent in reply to that. She could not first speak – yet, she did not think that there was anything she could say that would wholly encompass what she was feeling then. Thankfully, Natasha did not seem to expect a reply.
“What's more than that,” Natasha gave a smile – a real smile, Wanda liked to think, “I like you, and this team could use more level headed women about. All that testosterone . . .” She gave an exaggerated shudder, and Wanda surprised herself by smiling in reply. She even swallowed back a sudden bubble of laughter – unexpected as such a thing first had been. Her throat was dry over the sound, thick as it was from disuse.
“So,” Natasha held a hand out. “What do you say? Friends?”
“I say that it has been a very long time since I've had a friend. Not since . . .” she breathed in deep, and forced herself to say his name aloud. “Not since . . . Pietro.” Her voice lingered over his name like a caress, and she could not first let it go.
“Then I'm honored all the more so,” Natasha tilted her head as Wanda finally took her hand. Her handshake was firm, and she did not shy away from her grip.
“Now,” Natasha stepped back, “as a friend, I have to say that I noticed a weak point in your release,” her voice turned practical as she turned back to the punching bag – ready to demonstrate the form, and have her try again.
So Wanda stepped back, and watched the other woman as she worked. Firmly, she kept her eyes ahead, her vision front and center as she forced herself to look away from the empty place by her side. Slowly, very slowly, she vowed never to forget her twin, and yet, if she could build up his place once more, and from that building find, as Natasha had found . . .
A team, she finally admitted, thinking about the men in the facility just beyond.
A Vision, she pondered simply, not willing to define her fascination beyond that – not yet, anyway.
And, she thought as she caught Natasha's eyes: a friend.
Those, she thought, were the things that healing and home were made of.