Chapter Text
She was dodging a projectile when the feeling hit her. Like a swarm of bullets tearing through her flesh, soon followed by the coppery taste of blood on her tongue.
It all happened so fast. A moment earlier she was shifting and swinging around with ease all over the place, sending robots flying through the air one by one... And in a mere fraction of second her whole world collapsed around her. It all happened so fast but it felt like an eternity.
Her breath caught in her throat and her body froze so violently she nearly fell forward. Something felt wrong, terribly wrong. Her heart started to beat frantically but she stayed in place, eyes glazed, as if time had just… stopped. Like her twin had just did. She could sense that he was no longer running, that his body was completely still, and it felt so unnatural and strange. Something like that couldn’t happen in the middle of a battle. It just couldn’t.
He was in pain, that she could feel too.
Her mind reached out to her brother, surging toward him with far more power than necessary, and his feelings washed over her in a burning wave. Stunned surprise and pain prevailed, but she could also make out a sense of relief underneath it all, as if he had achieved what he meant to do. A new feeling came up when his mind welcomed hers. Guilt.
She suddenly felt like crying.
The beats of Pietro’s heart were starting to slow down – another odd thing to experience, his body was always running so fast – and cold began seeping deep in her bones when the realization finally dawned upon her, in that strange moment where time seemed to stretch like melting rubber. No. Pietro!
One second had been enough for her to grasp all of this and it had been a punch to the guts. The second that came after brought her pure agony when she felt her brother’s mind falter and tremble like the flame of a candle in the wind.
She could feel the link connecting her to Pietro straining, and it was an ache that hurt like no other, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it held strong, and she found herself begging for it to do so, tears starting to well up in her eyes, it had to hold on, please, please, and she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t… He stopped breathing.
Their thoughts melted together one last time, crying out each other’s names without needing any words.
She felt it, when his legs gave out.
She felt it when his body hit the ground.
She felt the string taut between them snap.
And then she couldn’t feel anything at all.
Couldn’t hear anything, not even her own scream as she fell to her knees. Without anyone to catch her, because he was gone.
Everything was a blur except for the dam in her mind falling apart in a burst of red flames. Power coursed through her whole body and she let it unleash, not caring for a second about whom or what it would hit, everything turning blood red underneath her eyelids. And even when her skin stopped buzzing and the ashes of her enemies vanished, she never stopped screaming.
When the outburst finally came to an end, she felt emptier than she had ever been, but it had nothing to do with the release of her powers.
She didn’t move for a long time, doubled over on her hands and knees in the dust of the battle, struggling to suck air into her lungs. It seemed to her that her heart had been torn out of her chest and stood now outside of her rib cage, still pulsing. Right now, heartbreak was far from figurative.
She was trembling like a leaf, silently sobbing at the thought that turned around endlessly in her mind. He’s not here. He’s not here. I am alone, he’s not here. And she felt so selfish for thinking this, for allowing herself to feel alone while he was dead, but she was cut in half, couldn’t shake off that void eating at her insides. She just wished her heart had stopped beating along with his.
She didn’t know how long she stayed here wishing for death. What finally made her get up and walk was the thought that she could still take revenge. So she forced her body to move, to go looking for the thing that had taken away from her the only person she had left in this world.
She found it in the wreckage of a train.
She marched towards him, her hands already aflame with a crimson glow.
She didn’t feel any satisfaction when she looked down at him; only relief to be able to look in the eyes of the creature that was the cause of her loss. She got down on her knees, slowly, like someone approaching a person’s death bed.
When the pathetic scrap heap Ultron had become turned toward her with glowing red eyes, she stared right back, her expression devoid of any pity, eyes lifeless. Then the thing spoke to her, his voice soft, as if she had not come here to tear the life out of him.
“Wanda, if you stay here, you’ll die.”
She could see on his oddly expressive face that he would be genuinely disappointed if she perished – and her powers with her. Had she been able to, she would have laughed.
Instead she answered through gritted teeth, trying her hardest to get the words out of her mouth without falling apart in front of him.
“I just did.”
She gathered what was left of her self-control to ask him, voice thick and yet quivering with hidden tears.
“Do you know how it felt?”
She finally allowed her powers to flow from the tips of her fingers to the inside of his metal chest, gripping what she was looking for and pulling, making it slow, agonizing. He gasped, arching upwards as she tore him open until his heart sprang free and landed in her palm.
She watched the piece of metal now grasped in her hand.
She wondered if it felt as awful for him as it did for her, but deep down she knew it wasn’t the case.
She turned her attention back to him anyway, to tell him one last thing.
Her voice was nothing more than a thin whisper when she leaned toward him, but it was full of venom, of the most vivid hatred she had ever experienced. And yet an unbearable sadness still filtered through each of her words.
She tightened her grip around the ripped out heart lying in the hollow of her hand.
“It felt like that.”