Work Text:
there are coyotes howling outside what used to be their home.
wanda maximoff is ten years old and she stares death in the face; closure in the form of a thick, lifeless metal husk branded with two words: STARK INDUSTRIES.
it means nothing to her.
( years later, in front of another piece of metal, this one that somehow gives off the illusion that it is not lifeless, she will hear the name again and think:
tony stark’s death will mean everything. )
pietro’s fingers are cold and tight and the only sign that he’s still alive is the gentle push and pull at the back of wanda’s brain; the brush of his breath against her ear.
every time the rocks shift beneath them wanda flinches.
pietro learns not to.
progress.
+++
some time later, wanda toys with the mind of tony stark as if it were nothing more than another piece of junk.
tony creates machines. wanda engineers fear.
she sees everything he does; the destruction, chaos, loss -- she stares forward and sees loss, feels loss, knows loss.
wanda tells herself she doesn’t care.
( she cares a little now. )
+++
it hurts, it hurts and there’s just too much and it h u r t s --
she sits outside a husk of a ship and thinks about how much these lifeless pieces of metal seem to stay with her. pietro kneels, wonders if she needs to get out of here.
wanda remembers how if she chooses, she can move things easily now -- things like dusty bombs lying in the rubble next to her face.
( but wanda doesn’t choose. )
she splays out her fingers on her knees and turns toward the black quinjet sitting on the edge of the forest.
“no, i want to finish the plan.
i want the big one.”
wanda catches her foot slipping on the loose pebbles underneath her.
pietro flinches. wanda doesn’t. progress.
+++
clint doesn’t know the full story.
clint doesn’t know anything about it with certainty. he knows it had something to do with the train in korea. he knows it had something to do with ultron and his new vision and maybe it had something to do with nat being ripped from him -- a scary, saccharine burning in his chest. something worse than what happened with nat because he thinks he’s going to be able to find her, but they’re not yet sure of what ultron’s going to do.
clint guesses he does know one thing with bedrock certainty. he knows that natasha makes him hurt the most of all.
that’s all clint knows and then natasha’s message comes through thick static and it makes him think that the world might end in a different light.
+++
light spills into the church, pink afternoon scattered around wanda as she defends the fate of the earth.
it’s not so bad, she thinks. not with pietro.
( “you know that i am older than you by 12 minutes, right?”
a laugh. “go.” )
there are bruises all around her arms from being tossed around, and she flicks her fingers impassively and for an absurdly long time, wanda thinks that they might be winning.
and then things change.
the light shifts, the robots close in and the tugging at the back of her brain stops and wanda thinks she might just die.
for the first time in her life she is afraid, afraid because she has nothing, but even when she had nothing she had pietro; afraid because he’s not there anymore and god, oh god this is all her fault -- this is all her fault.
she screams until her throat turns raw.
( not that it matters anyway, because he doesn’t come back. )
+++
wanda knows she’s falling to pieces.
she’s not unaware that vision’s following her as she stumbles down towards the train where ultron -- the original ultron is. she knows that someone else probably checks in with vision, and where one avenger is connected, all of them are. she tries to ignore him. it doesn’t work but she tries. they’re all afraid she’s going to hurt herself.
she’s pretty sure they’re worried about the wrong thing. she thinks they’ve all forgotten that she wasn’t always the avengers’ wanda, someone not always nice and not always kind.
she kneels in front of ultron and hovers a hand over a central piece of metal -- she doesn’t know what it is because she can’t sense him, but she rips out a chunk anyway.
( “if you stay here, you’re going to die.”
“i already did,” she said, impassively, because she thinks she knows that now, knows that pietro felt fear and pain and the last thing he said wasn’t bet you didn’t see that coming, it was a quietly whispered wanda. “do you want to know how it felt?” )
she feels a little better. she can break things too.
the coyotes are still howling.