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Pietro wakes at four in the morning, whole body shuddering enough to shake the bed before he staggers free from the sheets, flitting from wall to wall, faster than Wanda can follow with her eyes, even as she gropes for the lamp, pressing the room back into light. She remembers when Pietro would throw himself from wall to wall in his cell, pain and frustration thick enough in the air that she could taste it, smell it, drown in it.
Some nights, it’s her who wakes up, the room wreathed in red, in terror. There’s a process happening here that’s by no means complete.
“Pietro,” she says quietly, because they take it in turns to be the calm one. There’s no sense shouting, or getting up to try and grab him as he flits around the room in trails of blue-silver, the window opening and shutting like he can’t make up his mind. “Pietro.” His fear permeates the room, buzzes through her bones like the feeling is her own, and it’s dark and late and they were both supposed to be getting better at this. “Neshama,” she adds, soft, because they’re still adjusting themselves to softness, to the possibility of something other than frantic survival.
Pietro stops, abrupt, and then he isn’t a streak of light and movement and power anymore; he is simply her brother, shoulders slumped, hair fallen into his face, eyes dark and lost and wet. Wanda holds out her arms, and he hesitates and then crawls into her touch, face fitting into the hollow of her shoulder, mouth damp against her collarbone, heart an unsteady beat against hers.
“Shhh,” she says, as he doesn’t quite cry, he still can’t cry, “shhh.”
Part of her, part of him, part of both of them is waiting for knocks on the door, harsh lights, guards, demands, to be torn apart. But no one’s going to come, the lock on the door is on the inside, and whatever Pietro dreamed of is just that, a dream.
Wanda knots her hands in her brother’s hair and holds on and holds on and holds on.
-
By daylight, of course things are different. Pietro is sharp-tongued and sarcastic and she watches as their new teammates – perhaps their new friends – alternately find him amusing or grit their teeth against wishing he was someone they could fight once more. Neither of them are accustomed to having other people around them, especially not people who have good intentions toward them. Well, Wanda knows that they have good intentions toward her; they probably still want to punch Pietro in the face.
Sometimes, Wanda still feels like a scared little girl too used to a cell to function around crowds of humanity, whose thoughts flicker around her like moths and lightbulbs, and she wants to grab Pietro and have him curl around her and shut out the rest of humanity, the rest of everything, until it’s just them. No needles, no knives, no threats, no demands, nobody else at all. Other times, she’s relieved; not just at having escaped, but also at having new people around her, people who aren’t just her brother. He is the centre of her world, but he doesn’t need to be her whole world; spending time with other people makes reconnecting with Pietro sweeter, better, more real than when they were just two frantic scared siblings trying to make incarceration something other than what it was.
“You want to pick out any more pillows, Wanda?” Clint’s voice is dry, amused, and Wanda finds it easy enough to screw up her nose at him, add another one to the cart he’s currently pushing for her. “This is worse than when Cap needed to furnish his apartment.”
“You weren’t there for that,” Steve replies; he’s pushing a flat trolley with flatpack furniture in boxes on it, easy as if it were covered in pillows too.
“I can imagine,” Clint replies, and Wanda laughs. It’s getting easier to laugh, these days, like everything’s a step forward after all.
Pietro’s been quietly adding things to the cart when Clint isn’t looking, a flicker of movement that sometimes Wanda can catch and sometimes she can’t. They promised not to use their powers while they were out in public; Clint can pass by unnoticed easily enough, and Steve’s wearing a baseball cap with his head down, so the only people who’ll really stand out are her and Pietro, if they aren’t careful. It’s been a while since Wanda was out in public without wanting to make a statement, to announce her presence like some kind of casually marauding god, but she likes the easy simplicity of this, picking out soft furnishings that life in captivity didn’t really supply.
When they first moved into the new Avengers base, they were offered separate rooms; Wanda’s not sure if her refusal or Pietro’s was more vehement, but no one’s brought it up since. She’s not sure what the others know or think; she’s surprised herself by not caring.
Clint stops, as the cart he’s pushing suddenly seems much heavier than it was a minute ago, and he frowns down to see it’s crowded full, barely room for Wanda’s pillows, balanced precariously on the top.
He twists, and Pietro comes sauntering over from another aisle, carrying bedsheets that match his eyes and make Wanda swallow, innocence written across his features.
“You ass,” Clint tells him, but Steve is smirking, and Wanda presses her fingers to her mouth, giggles escaping anyway.
-
Pietro’s mouth is everything Wanda has ever known or ever wanted, every kiss feeding back a version of herself that makes her more, something greater. She has not been so cocooned from the world that she doesn’t know the connotations of this, Pietro’s hands in her hair, his thigh between hers, but those who would judge her haven’t lived through what they have, hasn’t seen what they’ve seen, can’t do what they can do.
Pietro nuzzles at her throat, pressing kisses and murmurs of devotion with trembling lips. Her brother, who pretends to be the strong one, the one who knows just what he is doing, the protective one, but Wanda knows him better than that, knows when to tug and when to soothe, knows when to pretend when he isn’t crying.
Their legs slide against the sheets, the new blue ones that they picked out to bring back here and spread out on their bed and crawl onto, all their own choices, all in their own space, where no one else can come, where no one else is welcome. It’s been so long since they owned anything but each other, but here they are, a room full of things they liked and wanted and chose and could have – “Stark’s paying,” Clint shrugged, “might as well get another cart” – and somehow, still, at the centre of it all, is Pietro. Who still belongs to her in every breath, every touch, every time his knees skid against the sheets, every time she digs her nails into his back to remind herself that his skin is perfect and whole and her property, every inch.
Some time later, he pillows his head on her breasts and says nothing, and she strokes the skin behind his ear with a fingertip and stays silent too.
In the quieter moments, it’s too easy to remember the way Pietro lolled when he was dead, silent, broken. The paralysing grief that ate through every part of Wanda’s being, turning her into something else, something she couldn’t recognise anymore because she was no longer anything whole without Pietro, no longer something that could exist separately. And yet, she was glad that it was her who had to suffer that, and not Pietro; she’s relieved that he doesn’t have to live with those memories, the bone-stripping feeling of loss. He’s suffered too much already, and she’ll always spare him anything that she can. It’s what love is, among other things.
Pietro makes a soft humming sound, breath tickling her skin, and Wanda shifts to press a kiss into his hair, white where it used to be dark. They were different people, once, they’ve been so many different people in so many short years with each other as the only constant. Their world is changing again, this time for the better, this time for the brighter, and Wanda is happy to slough off all the grief and the agony and the feel of dark cold walls that never cracked, to leave it all behind: everything except Pietro, who is in her bones and her blood and her mind and her heart, and who she will never lose again.
-
It was Clint who washed Pietro’s corpse, who cleaned the blood from the bullet wounds and the dirt from his face, while Wanda watched and pressed her fingers to her face where her cheeks were dry because this was worse than tears, worse than any sobbing could ever alleviate. The world was saved, though it didn’t feel that way for her, and the Avengers floated around her like ghosts, the only thing she could see clearly was Pietro. Pietro, who was silent and still in a way he’d never been even when they were children, ordinary as it was possible for her brother to ever be.
It was Bruce who brought her the shawls, she thinks; he’d be the one to know that red and white were for mourning, where the others would still assume black. She wrapped the white around her shoulders and the red around her head, wanting to hide beneath something, smother herself in the hope that on the other side of the fabric the world would somehow heal itself. She wanted to touch Pietro, to smooth his messy hair off his forehead and feel his skin one last time, but she couldn’t do it; traditions pressed into her back in a time she can barely remember, that exists more in beliefs she can’t let go of than in any real memories. The dead are unlucky, though Pietro could never be unlucky, could never harm her; Wanda watched him until her eyes burned.
Later, Clint left to call his wife, and Wanda stayed still and watched, and watched, and wished that Pietro’s eyelids would flutter, and they never did.
She had no idea how much later it was that Thor came to her, took a seat a respectful distance from where Wanda was sat beside Pietro.
“We do this on Asgard,” he said softly. “We stay with our loved ones until they can be sent back to the stars.”
Wanda imagined Pietro amongst the stars, and thought that he would like that.
“My mother died recently,” Thor continued, quiet. “My father was- was too angry to remain with her, and my brother-” his voice cracked a little, and Wanda thought about what she saw of his dying brother when she was poking into his head, and guilt blossomed for a split second, something other than the cloying suffocating grief. “Well,” Thor managed after a moment, “my brother was in prison, so it was I who sat with her.”
Wanda swallowed, and her voice didn’t sound like her own when she said: “we call this shemira.”
Her throat was dry, but of course she couldn’t drink; her head ached, but it was a dull throb behind everything else. She couldn’t leave, wouldn’t leave; not when Pietro was all she had left, even cold and still as he was.
Thor nodded, and his expression was thoughtful when he said: “we perform our ritual because we do not wish our loved one to be lonely; their soul has not quite left, and it would be cruel to abandon them.”
Wanda closed her eyes and remembered her mother, clad in red for mourning, telling her that her grandmother’s soul, her mulo, would linger for three days before she could leave. And then her eyes snapped open, and she turned sharply to look at Thor, who gave her something that was almost a smile.
“I will leave you,” he added, almost too quick, and closed the door behind him. She could hear him saying something in the corridor outside, and then footsteps, and then nothing.
If Pietro hadn’t left – if his mulo was left – Wanda shut her eyes again, twisting the shawl between her fingers as they began to flicker red, because he was here, and lonely, and surely he wouldn’t need to remain like that. Surely.
She took in a breath and another one and prayed and prayed and summoned up every shred of tikvah she had, every piece of love, and felt the world twist around her.
When Wanda opened her eyes, Pietro was still lying cold and naked in front of her, but every single bullet wound was gone, as though he had never been injured at all. She inhaled, sharp, and so did Pietro, the movement mirroring hers. It was enough; more than enough.
Wanda threw herself on him, stroking his cheeks where colour and warmth was starting to return, and she could hear where his heart was beating in time with hers. His eyelids fluttered and then opened, and his eyes were bluer than she remembered, bluer than anything had ever been, could ever be again.
“I thought,” he began, his throat dry, coughed, tried again: “I thought you needed to wake me with a kiss.”
Wanda knew she was crying now, great ugly streaks of tears, and didn’t care. “That’s just for princesses, you idiot.”
“I’ll be your princess, neshama,” he whispered, one arm closing around her shoulders as his other hand pushed himself upright, so he could sit, cradling her close.
Wanda laughed and sobbed, and his hand tightened in her hair, and he kissed her with dry lips, again and again and again, until she wasn’t sure whose breath was whose anymore, one life beating between the two of them.
-
They are still figuring out where they slot into this new arrangement of the world: how to fit into a team that they once were trying to destroy, how to fit into a team at all when the only team they were ever part of involved each other. Wanda’s relationship with the world has never exactly been ordinary; it won’t be ordinary now, either, but it’s not as though she has much to compare it to.
It helps that the rest of the team are uncertain around one another too, that there are gaps where she and Pietro can slide in easily enough. She thinks she likes them, this new array of people whose world experiences differ so violently from her own, and yet do not; there’s a wariness among them, but a warmth, too, a knowing that Wanda would once have shied away from but doesn’t now. If anyone’s going to understand what it was like to volunteer for an experiment that was supposed to be simple but wasn’t at all, and then to be treated solely as a weapon, a wrecking disaster, then these people will.
Natasha is teaching her to spar, to fight with her body rather than just her abilities, and it’s nice, grounding, having something she can do that’s more than being the one at the back with her fingers full of people’s worst fears. Not that she’s going to forget what to do with that; she thinks it might still come in handy, one day. Still, it’s nice to feel more connected with her body than she has in years, to realise that she can be more than a curl of scarlet and fingertips.
Pietro spends his training time aggravating Steve by running faster than even a supersoldier can, while Sam jogs slower than them both and shakes his head in something that might just be fondness. That’s Wanda’s brother all over, really: he lets you know he likes you by winding you up. Wanda’s relieved that Steve, at least, seems to have realised this.
It’s possible they could have tried to walk back into the world, the real one, where every day isn’t a matter of life or death. But they agreed to be manipulated into miracles, and even if their revenge was misplaced, what they can do no longer is. Maybe they could try and live somewhere, quiet and happy and hidden away from the relentless anger and destruction that humanity rains down on itself, but then what was it all for? Why gain the ability to be incredible, to do more than anyone else can, if they hide it away, waste it, and let people die anyway?
“The minute they try and make me wear a fancy helmet, we’re leaving,” Pietro tells Wanda, and she laughs, rakes fingers through his hair to knock their foreheads together.
“I think you’d look great in a fancy helmet,” she tells him, trying for serious and falling far short, and she shrieks when he picks her up and flings her onto their bed for it, flowing over her in silver-blue lightning, his mouth on her cheeks and her chin and her giggling mouth until she stops laughing and concentrates instead on kissing him back, on the way he touches her, hungry and yet reverent, familiar but surprised every time. It’s glorious.
“Are you happy here?” he asks, drawing back, and Wanda wants to pull his mouth back down to hers again, wants to climb all over him until he’s hers, only hers, skin and bone and muscle and blood, every inch claimed and owned. There’s that look in his eyes, though, and instead she sits up, bringing him with her so she doesn’t have to let go.
“Are you?” she asks him, soft.
They could leave if they wanted; even tossed the idea around in the early days, when everyone seemed to be recovering from their battle, and Wanda couldn’t leave Pietro alone, couldn’t stop touching him, as though if she did he’d drop dead again. They can leave, they can run, and no one will ever find them again. No one even has a hope of finding them again.
Pietro hesitates for a moment, and that’s not like him, always rushing ahead into things, words spilling unconsidered from him, stinging her feelings more than a few times. He licks his lips and Wanda cups his face, gentle and warm, and waits.
“I am,” he says at last. “It’s a new life for us.”
And then Wanda realises what’s been bothering her brother, and she smiles even as she works it out, kisses him and brushes a fingertip over his mouth when she pulls away, tracing the shape of his mouth. He’s frowning, like he thinks she’s laughing at him, and Wanda pulls him closer, wishing she could crawl beneath his skin.
“We are building a life on the foundation of ourselves,” she whispers, the words for him and him alone, not even for this room that is finally theirs and no one else’s. “How could I possibly want a new life that didn’t revolve around you?”
Pietro makes a soft sound, even as she watches him try to brazen it out, pretend that he wasn’t insecure, not even for the slightest of moments.
“Ani ohev otach,” he breathes, the words tumbling across her mouth, and Wanda knows, but it doesn’t stop her smiling under the warmth of them.
“Ani ohevet otchah,” she responds, Pietro’s hands in her hair, his skin against her mouth, his body curled around hers, the world new and different and wonderful and rolling out before them.