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It’s the early hours when Pietro wakes with a gasp, jumping up in shock. The remnants of his dream (falling falling falling) wisp away and he’s suddenly aware he’s lying in bed, arms wrapped firmly around a cushion, body touching solid ground and not thin air like his mind tricked him into believing. The swoop in his stomach dissipates almost instantly, but turns into something much heavier, an aching pain. It’s the feeling that something is completely and utterly wrong but you have no idea what, dread creeping up the back of your neck like ice and fire all at once. Pietro rolls over and checks the baby monitor, listening closely to the sounds of his son’s breathing.
Satisfied that he’s still sleeping peacefully, Pietro rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling.
Its times like this he can’t decide if he hates or loves the rule you both made those years ago.
You’re curled up on the sofa in the tower, Pietro tucked behind you his hands resting comfortably on your newly developing bump.
“No more team missions.” You murmured. “Not after this.”
“What?” He replied, nose bumping into the back of your ear. “No more Speedy Squared?”
You’d laughed, high and loud.
“Considering Speedy Squared is soon to become Speedy Cubed, I think we’ve officially lost that nickname regardless.”
“As long as Tony Stark is alive, we’ll always be Speedy Squared.” He laughed, leaning around you to press a kiss to your bump, affection bubbling in your chest. “Just plus one extra.”
Pietro is brought back into the present by a shockingly loud noise as his phone vibrates harshly on the wooden top of the bedside table. Straining an arm over, he grabs it and answers it without even looking at the screen.
“Pietro?” His sister’s voice is tinny and quiet in his ear. “Are you okay?”
He groans, rolling back over onto his belly.
“Wanda? I was just about to call and ask the same thing. Are you hurt?”
“Are you…” She trails off sounding puzzled. “So, that wasn’t you?”
Pietro digs a fist into his eye and yawns.
“Me? No. Can you feel it too? Like you’ve be-“
“Like you’ve been punched in the gut. Yeah, Pi, I felt it too.”
He frowns at that, because it’s not like being punched at all, it hurts like someone is ripping out his gut. But he’s too tired to hold a conversation at this hour, instead just agreeing with Wanda with a low hum.
He murmurs reassurances to his sister, ending the call, and rolling back over onto his side.
It’s not like a punch to the gut at all. His fingers slide down to his stomach as if he doesn’t quite believe that he isn’t bleeding out, soaking the sheets in crimson liquid.
It doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut.
It feels like a terrible gaping hole.
His face turns pale, the red splattered across it providing a stark contrast.
“Hey, hey. Sweetheart, look at me.” You’re kneeling over him, a hand on his cheek trying to get you to look at him. “Just look at me, it’s okay. Sam’s on his way, so is Bucky, it’s okay. I’m here, see?”
He coughs and blood dribbles down his chin as he shakes his head.
“It’s still inside.” He rasps, motioning towards his stomach. “It didn’t go all the way through, I can feel it.”
You know how dangerous that can be, you know for a fact in the milliseconds it’s even taken you to process what Pietro has said his tissue is binding itself together, healing and reforming. As his body heals it’s locking the bullet into a dangerous position, stranding him in an endless loop of agonising pain and near fatal bleeding out as his gut is ripped up from the inside over and over again.
“Okay, fuck. Okay. I can do this, I can fix this.”
His back arches off of the ground and you look down to see the skin on his stomach healing over anew, a single fragile layer signalling the beginning of the end.
Pietro looks at you with wide eyes, a hand coming up to cup your face, smearing blood as he goes.
You’re faintly aware of Sam landing somewhere behind you, and the heavy stomp of Bucky’s boots.
His skin finally touches yours and it’s burning hot and ice cold all at once.
“Frumoasa mea Prințesă.” He slurs out, and then laughs. “I always did have the worst timing, no?”
“That’s us. Fastest people in the world but always running late.” You sob out a laugh, hand covering his. “But I’m not about to let my best friend die in a dusty plain in the middle of fuck knows where. I’ll fix this, okay?”
He skims a thumb shakily over your cheekbones before whispering.
“I love you.”
And you suddenly understand all of the descriptions Bobby has ever given you, because you swear your blood freezes in your veins.
Then Pietro’s hand falls limp, his head lolling back.
“No!” You yelp, scrabbling at his uniform. “Don’t, no. Pietro, wake up, saying something else, say something different.”
You feel Sam drag you backwards with strong arms locked around your arms, but you’re kicking out frantically, sending dust flying, using the confusion to lash out, and Sam gets an elbow to the face.
You’re scrabbling at the knife in your ankle holster, tangling a hand with Pietro’s.
Then you’re plunging the blade into his stomach, fingers digging frantically into the wound.
You hear Sam’s thickened yells of “WOAH, WOAH!” as he tries to stop the blood flowing from his nose. You hear the metallic clunk of Bucky’s arm as he reaches toward you, but then you’re dropping the bullet next to Pietro with a soft plink sound. Throwing the blade to the side you sit up, squeezing at his fingers. Then you realise his chest isn’t moving.
Bucky latches onto your arm, and pulls you off of the ground. In hindsight you’ll know he was only trying to help, that he didn’t want you to see this. To watch the colour of death creep up into Pietro’s face. But right now, you don’t have that knowledge, all you have is absolute terror and desperation. You let out a noise so ferocious Bucky lets go and physically takes a step back in fear.
You throw yourself back onto the ground, your shaking hands frantically beginning chest compressions.
You can feel your tears falling thick and fast and you frantically try and keep Pietro’s heart going long enough for his body to catch up and to heal.
You feel a rib give and snap under the heel of your hand and when you say his name it comes out as a desperate sob. The only colour on his face is the bright red, transforming from splatters to smears when you touch his face, heaving air into his lungs. You don’t know how long you sit there, how long it is before Bucky puts a gentle hand on your shoulder, trying to pull you away again. Theoretically you know it’s only a few minutes, but it feels like hours.
But when Pietro draws in that first raspy breath, you swear it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard.
He’s just cracked an egg into the pan when he feels it again.
The hollowed out feeling in his stomach, a feeling that something is absolutely not right.
This time, he phones Wanda.
“Pietro?” Wanda’s voice is small, even more so than this morning. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Sorry. You know when you just get that, uh, weight in your stomach and you don’t know why? When I woke up earlier and felt like it, it hasn’t shifted since. But just then.” He pauses, worrying at the inside of his lip. “It’s like…it was amplified somehow. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, frate. It’s uh..” He hears her inhale shakily. “It’s been a long day. I’m sorry for worrying you. I-I love you.”
“Wanda. Please, tell me the truth. Are you okay?”
“I need to go, Pietro. I’m sorry for worrying you, I love you.” And then she hangs up.
He replays her words in his mind, feeling ill at the fact for the first time in his life, his sister’s words have brought him no comfort.
He thinks about the fact she said it’s been a long day, doubting himself for a ridiculous moment by looking at the clock on the microwave that does in fact flash 9:04am.
Pietro turns back to the eggs and tries not to think about it.
You wake up to gentle fingers patting at your hair.
You groan as you lift your head from your arms where you’re hunched over, your legs curled up under you in the plastic chair, head rested next to Pietro’s hip on the hospital bed.
He gives you a strained smile as you look up at him.
“Good morning.” He croaks out, and you can’t help but immediately burst into tears.
His face shifts immediately into one of concern, as you clambour into the bed next to him, his arm winding around your waist as you fling your arms around his neck.
“Hey.” He whispers, his other hand on your cheek, tilting your head up till you’re looking at him. “I’m okay.”
He inhales sharply when you press your lips to his, huffing in amusement when you cup his face placing soft fleeting kisses on every part of skin there is.
“I’d hoped our first kiss would be more romantic, no?” He murmurs. “Not with me in a hospital bed.”
“You said my words.”
He frowns at you, the furrows deepening when you take his hand, guiding it slowly up your shirt. You lay his hand against your ribcage, his fingers curling around the curve of your body on instinct.
When he feels the raised skin, his eyes widen to an almost comedic level. You dig your fingers into his hair, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. You feel a tear sliding down your nose and into his hair as he trace your ribs, his breathing shallow as his fingertips follow the line of the L, the stark lines of the V and the flick of the E. It’s when he gets to the elegant curve of the Y that he understands, pulling you forwards until you’re pressed as close to him as he can be.
Your fingers ghost over the rapidly whitening scars on his stomach, like you need to make sure you did get the bullet out and you did keep his heart going for long enough, and it is beating steadily under your ear where you’re pressed against his chest.
Without a word he takes hold of your hand, bringing it to the curve of his hip, and you allow yourself to look at the blackened letters for the first time. He shivers as you ghost your fingertips along the lines, pressing a dot after the N with a sad smile.
“But, how do we know?”
“We’ve always known, Pietro.”
When he hears the scrape of the key, he’s out of the kitchen in milliseconds. Abandoning the frying pan onto a cold ring of the hob, he’s sprinting to the foyer and throwing open the front door the second the latch turns.
Except it’s not you.
Pietro sees a key hovering in front of him, then a shaking hand, before finally settling on Wanda’s face, and her wobbling lip. His eyes flit over her shoulder and he spots a solemn looking Steve, and a positively broken looking Sam.
With the years he’s spent watching American movies, the irony is not lost on Pietro. Memories of you both when you were younger, huddled underneath blankets giggling as you smoothed out the furrows of his brow with your fingertips, explaining silly nuances he didn’t quite understand. Tropes and traditions of Hollywood and American life he hadn’t quite understood then.
He’s staring blankly at the tear stained faces of his sister, his leader, and his wife’s best friend.
But Pietro can’t help but be aware of the fact that he’s staring at two soldiers standing on his doorstep.
He thinks about arguing, that desperate pleading “no” already halfway up his throat, ready to spill out into his mouth and roll off of his tongue. As if his defiance will count for something, as if the gods themselves will hear his plea, as if god Pietro doesn’t even know what but please please please.
Pietro eyes scan across the group, before locking his gaze with Steve’s.
Steve looks away and inhales sharply.
And Pietro knows.
He feels himself stumble forward, catching himself on the door frame and then Wanda’s hands are on his face, pulling him towards her, his face burying into the crook of her neck, hands gripping into his hair as she holds him.
Pietro doesn’t voluntarily make the noise, instead his howl of anguish rips through him like a bolt of lightning moving faster than he ever could. Wanda lets out a sob and grips him tighter as he screams again, both of them sinking slowly to the floor as his knees buckle underneath him. If the first scream is one of disbelief, the second is one of pure agony as the realisation of what woke him up hits him.
He’d woken up thinking it was merely the shock of his bad dream, maybe even something as ridiculous as indigestion. (“Slow down, Pietro!” You’d chide him. “You’re gonna make yourself sick!” You were telling him, you were always telling him.) and the knowledge that it was something else entirely is too much.
He’d felt you go.
He’d felt your soul be ripped away from his in the deepest depths of his being.
And he hadn’t even fully realised.
He screams and screams and screams into Wanda’s shoulder until he can’t breathe.
He’s vaguely aware of Sam sitting down on the step, his face in his hands and his back shaking as he cries. Steve squeezing past him and into the house to locate your boy. Wanda’s choked off gasps are warm against his ear as her hands stroke the back of his head.
He’s stuttering over his words, he can’t get a breath to force the words out.
“But she didn’t...” He presses his lips together, feeling like he could vomit with raw emotion. “Wanda. She didn’t say the words, I don’t.” He lets out a desperate choking sound. “Wanda, please. Make it stop.”
Her fingers scrunch up in his hair, arms wrapping around him firmer.
“I am. I can’t take any more of it, I’m sorry.” She whispers to him, her voice cracking.
He lets out a pained groan as he realises why Wanda was so eager to get off of the phone earlier. She already knew. They’d told Wanda first, knew that he’d need her. Knew he couldn’t do this on his own. God, he thinks desperately, how is he gonna do any of this on his own?
Pietro’s train of thought is all it takes for Wanda to lose concentration for a split second, but it’s enough for her to lose grasp on the hold she has on his mind, enough for her to accidentally crumble the barriers she’s set up to protect him.
The gravity of the situation, and the full spectrum of Pietro’s pain hits him like a tidal wave and it’s too much all at once and he pushes Wanda away as he empties his stomach onto the decking.
Wanda’s hands stroke back his hair, and Pietro looks over his shoulder at his sister.
“I don’t.” The noise he makes between his sobs is like nothing Wanda has ever heard before, and she can’t stop herself from thinking he sounds more like a wounded animal than her brother. “That wasn’t what she said. She didn’t say my words.”
Then Sam is tugging Pietro off of the floor, pulling him into his arms as they cry together.
The force of Sam’s embrace spins them in a circle and when he looks over Sam’s shoulder, Pietro sees it.
The moment he sees the answering machine lit up like a Christmas tree, he knows.
He’s always known.
It takes him two days before he can bring himself to press the button.
The red light constantly blinking, a beacon of finality pulsing through the house.
He’s sat on the floor with his back against the couch, the phone dragged off of the coffee table and into his lap.
He takes a breath, finally letting his thumb push down on the bottom.
There’s a beep, a pause, and a crackle.
“Hey, Pi!” Your voice rings out crystal clear, and Pietro feels the bile rise up in his throat. You’re completely unaffected though, laughing easily, and he can hear you shooing Sam away. “We’re about to drop off the grid so I figured I’d call you quick. Sammy is going on and on about how this is an easy job, and honestly, he’s worse than you are sometimes. Anyway what time is it there? I presume it’s either dinnertime or bedtime if you’re not answering. Anyway, tell him mommy says goodnight, or give him a kiss from me. Make sure he’s picked all his lego up too, there’s only so many times I can cope with them being embedded in my feet. I’ll be back early Wednesday morning too, so don’t use all the eggs again! I want some sunny side up and bacon waiting for me.” Your voice softens, and Pietro feels his heart drop for the millionth time, knowing exactly what is coming. “I love you, Pi. I’ll be back soon-.” Then the message cuts you off in a fizz of static.
He’d always known.
He just wishes he hadn’t.
“Press one to save your message, press two to delete your message, press three to listen again. Press four to-”
Pietro’s fingers jabs at the number three so hard he worries for a second he’s broken the phone, and then your voice rings out again into the cold empty room, and he feels warmth bloom in his chest.
He presses three again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
He’s laughing about the legos when the floorboard creaks behind him.
“Pietro.” Wanda murmurs into the darkened room. “Don’t do this.”
“She said them.”
“I know.”
“She didn’t mean to, the call it cut off and…she just-“
“I know.”
Then Wanda is kneeling next to him, gentle hands taking the machine and placing it back on the table.
Pietro watches as she presses the number one and the room goes quiet.
Pietro watches the red light go out.
He’d always known.