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Wanda had come to find that she liked the minds of children, with their simple complexities and their unfaltering ability to imagine and create and dream.
Even little Nathaniel's mind, with its undeveloped, nearly animal-like compulsions to seek out nourishment and comfort was soothing in the way it danced around her psyche like the play of warm sunlight, more intangible and untouchable than the ways of water and earth and flame she had come to understand the consciousnesses of others to be.
She hummed as she changed the baby, feeling for the exact moment when her voice reached a pitch and rhythm he found the most soothing and carrying the melody through from there. In response, Nathaniel cooed, content through a task that normally displeased him. His grin was wide and toothless, drawing a matching smile from Wanda as she used her powers to do away with the soiled diaper with a flick of her hand.
As she worked, she kept a sixth sense open for the other two children. In the living room, Lila was carefully practicing a ballerina’s stretches, eager as she was to show her 'Auntie Nat' just how much she had learned in the few weeks she had been studiously applying herself to the art. When the girl had first asked if Natasha could teach her, Clint had gone very still before telling his daughter to ask for something else in a voice so strained that even Lila had noticed – knowing that her words had been wrong, but unable to understand how or why they were. But Natasha's smile had been real enough (the pulse of her mind only satisfied – triumphant, even) as she said that she enjoyed dancing; it was something she chose to keep as her own, and she would be happy to share it with another. More than once, Wanda had revisited that moment in her memory; reflecting, and wishing that she could adopt a similar such poise and sense of self to treat her own demons with.
Cooper, she felt next, had finished putting the frozen pizza in the oven, and had a burner going to heat oil to make popcorn the proper way – which would accompany their planned run of Star Wars films, eager as he was to fill in the gaps in her knowledge of pop culture. He had a list, she thought with no small amount of fondness, not quite unlike the one Steve chipped away at the Facility, or the one she learned beside Vision in their turn.
But there was something special about the child's honest friendship and simple affection, she thought. And the knowledge that his parents trusted what they loved best with her . . . that they trusted her, even when knowing what they knew . . . it was a knowledge that sobered her, and she was determined to prove that their trust was not misplaced.
Which was why, when Lila shrieked to find a toy snake in the folds of her tutu (and she felt a flare of satisfaction and tickled amusement from Cooper to tell her just who that culprit was) Wanda merely sighed and rolled her eyes. But her turning to console the girl before she could turn on her brother in retaliation was cut off by the sharp, tell-tale scent of something burning. She froze, the memory at first releasing a barrage of sensory images, pummeling her mind's eye with: the Maximoff's apartment as the floor broke open and swallowed all but them in its merciless maw of a mouth; soldering skin, hot and burning underneath the merciless hands of science and enhancement; rubble, too hot to touch, heating the soles of her boots as ash fell like snow and her lungs screamed for air that wasn't touched by death and destruction . . .
. . . but in the here and now the smell was nothing more than Cooper having lit the wrong burner for the popcorn, and the towel that had been resting too close to that burner had caught flame. With an iron will, Wanda shoved her memories down deep within her psyche, and laid Nathaniel in his playpen so that she could see to the mistake before it spread.
Wanda darted into the kitchen and picked up the burning towel just in time for a sprinkler to go off above her head – another one of Clint's home improvement projects – while, at the same moment, she heard the sound of stampeding feet and shattering pottery from further down the hall. One of the children slipped while chasing the other, and had barreled into Laura's prized Venetian vase, which was now in pieces on the floor – her mind supplied the images from the children's collective eyes, painting the chain of events in shades of red.
Predictably roused by the ruckus, Nathaniel chose that moment to begin crying, and his cries were punctuated by Lila declaring with all the passion the seven year old could muster: “I'm telling!” leaving no doubt as to who the culprit for the broken vase was.
For a moment, Wanda simply stood there, dripping wet as the sprinklers turned off and the fire alarm wailed for a moment longer before ceasing. Overwhelmed, she dropped the now ruined towel into the sink before concentrating – drying herself with a wave of power, and sending a vision of dancing animals to play before Nathaniel's eyes, distracting him as she pushed his memories of peace and contentment in his mother's arms to the forefront of his mind. Next, she concentrated and sent a wave of red down the hall to repair the vase, returning it to how it once was, just moments before. It was delicate work to rebuild - certainly more difficult than merely summoning her powers for destruction - but her veins had been rebuilt for her to twist and rewrite reality itself to her will in return. While she had long suspected that she could use her powers in such a way, this was the first time she had actually tried to create in any large way, and her fingertips trembled from the strain.
. . . but Laura had loved that vase, and Clint had been all too happy when he paused their training mission overseas to grab the souvenir for his wife when most of his movements around the world were classified ones that went without speaking between them. She could not let it rest in pieces - she would not.
Wanda stood there for a long moment following, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead and fighting away the throbbing in her temples that always accompanied using her powers too strenuously - or too much, too quickly, in any new way. Her gifts were like any muscle of the body, and without proper exercise they ached in protest to use . . . even though a voice, deep within her consciousness, whispered that she was only scratching the surface of her true potential . . . someday, it insisted, she would be able to rewrite the laws of time and tide and death itself -
- but she was drawn from her musings when she noticed two round pairs of eyes trained on her, wide and awe-struck as they stared at her own red shaded eyes. Instinctively she tensed, still tender from Tony's instinctual unease whenever she was in the same room with him, to the way their Captain sometimes looked at her and let his eyes linger for a heartbeat too long. In those moments she could feel his careful scrutiny, his soldier’s caution, even when accompanied by his sympathy - he having lost too much to HYDRA to trust in the careless ways of fate again, even if she knew he wished to.
But this was Clint's family, Clint's children, and she should not have been surprised when each child exclaimed, nearly at the same time:
“That was so cool!”
“Can you do it again?”
“How did you do it?”
“Could you teach me?”
“Can you fly?” Lila's little voice was pitched with awe, whistling through her newly missing teeth. But Wanda was kept from answering any of their questions when she caught a stray thought from Cooper's mind, and she turned on the older boy to harshly scold:
“You are not breaking more of your mother's pottery just so I can put it back together again.” Her nerves were then thoroughly set on edge, and the carefully bland American accent she had been practicing gave way to thick vowels and dancing consonants, and she knew that her eyes had flashed with scarlet to match.
“Does daddy know you can do that?” Lila was the one to practically inquire next. “Because that would make working on the tool shed quicker, and then he could build a house for my . . . ” But her voice faltered when she lifted her hand to see blood dripping from her palm, trickling from where she had cut it – presumably while trying to pick up the broken pieces of her mother's vase before Wanda had fixed it.
“You are bleeding,” Wanda noted instinctively, stepping towards the girl.
“I am,” Lila said, blinking as if she was surprised to see the blood there. It only took a moment for her face to blanch at the sight, and her look turned faint.
Immediately, Wanda took the girl's hand in her own to distract her. “Come, let's get you to the bathroom, and I can take care of this for you.”
Lila bit her lip and nodded, and Wanda glanced over her shoulder to tell Cooper, “In the meantime, clean up the water.”
“But,” Cooper protested, looking at her meaningfully, “can't you just -” he waved a hand in what she assumed he meant to be a mummery of her powers, and she narrowed her eyes.
“Call it a reminder not to torment your sister the next time you're tempted,” Wanda retorted, and waved a hand so that dry towels from the laundry room floated in to strike Cooper square in the chest, forcing him to catch them.
Sullenly, Cooper heaved a sigh and went about his task with slumped shoulders. Wanda watched him for a moment before guiding Lila down the hall and into the bathroom. She had the girl rinse her hand in the sink, already satisfied to see that the cut was shallow and clotting nicely; it was just a scratch. Even so, she had Lila sit down on the toilet lid, and dabbed peroxide on the wound to disinfect it, just to be on the safe side.
“I,” Lila solemnly declared as Wanda went about her task, “do not like snakes . . . or brothers,” she added, wincing at the cold sensation of the peroxide meeting the open cut.
Wanda felt a pang, remembering her own brother, but she swallowed it away with a now practiced ease, unwilling to be dragged down into the abyss of her memories just then.
“They are not so bad,” Wanda shrugged as she threw away the soiled cotton-ball. “Not all of the time, at least.”
“I don't mind Nate,” Lila conceded reluctantly. “He's not so bad.”
“Cooper loves you, or he would not pick on you so,” Wanda gave a wan smile to say, taken by her own memories of Pietro before she thought about what she said and amended in a stiff voice, “Even so, that is not an excuse for anyone to treat you less than you deserve, so don't let it be – for any boy. Ever.”
“Daddy has told me that too,” Lila nodded her head sagely to say. “And so has Auntie Nat.”
Appropriately convinced, Wanda shook her head as she took the container of band-aids from the medicine cabinet, for a moment only pitying the unfortunate soul who would dare to treat Lila any less than she deserved in the years to come. Even a worthy boy would need to have quite the constitution to survive her family – her entire family - but that was a thought touched by fondness; fondness and a strange such of something else . . . something more . . . something that she had not felt in a very long time. Belonging, home, she tentatively defined the foreign emotions, such as she had not felt since the Maximoffs took them in and showed them a home, but she was taken from her reflections by Lila's soft voice asking:
“Do you miss your brother?” Lila's eyes were wide and innocent as they caught on the bright light from over the sink. Even so, Wanda's fingertips turned white about the band-aids in reply. “Daddy said that's where Nate's middle name comes from . . . he said that he saved his life.”
From anyone else, she did not know how she would have handled the question; but from the child with her honest eyes and sincere concern . . .
“I miss him every day,” were the only words she could force from her mouth, unsure how to say that she missed Pietro like one lung longing for its second, and she still wanted him back as a heart desperately searched forblood to beat . . . but instead she was only silent as she held out the box of band-aids and let Lila take her pick.
“I will forgive Cooper for the snake, then,” as solemn as a queen granting an appeal from her subjects, Lila voiced her decision after picking a purple band-aid for her hand. “But only if he puts caramel on the popcorn for me.”
“I believe that he can be persuaded,” Wanda said, and pressed the bandage into place to cover the child's wound. In reply, Lila's smile was bright, and she flexed her hand to test out the cut on her palm before slipping down from the toilet seat and darting out into the hall again.
As Lila went to find her brother, Wanda ducked into the living room to check on the baby, glad to see that Nathaniel was still happily settled in his playpen – content as he tried to reach up and catch the dancing shapes of red-tinged animals she had set to play before his eyes. She waved a hand through the illusion, and reached down to pick him up, kissing the round curve of his cheek and assuring herself that he was at ease from the ruckus.
That potential crisis averted, she reached out to feel the bright, warm light of Nathaniel's simple baby thoughts, letting them fall as a balm over her own psyche. She closed her eyes, and felt the warning burn of oncoming tears, hating that, even these months later, her brother's loss was still as painful and debilitating as it was those first moments following his death in Sokovia. Even so, Wanda frowned, not wanting the children to pick up on her grief as she furiously wiped her at her eyes, breathing out a frustrated breath in time to feel a whisper of movement behind her, coming from a soft, careful step, and she -
- immediately, she felt the urge to attack and defend fill her veins with scarlet fire before she recognized the familiar psyche of their visitor. Surprised, she turned, and found her accent thick to ask, “Vision? What are you doing here?”
The android looked, she thought, as if he was unbalanced with his step. He was dressed as he often was at the Facility; in a simpler, more mute version of the golds and greens she had first seen him march into battle with, even if his cape was willed into existence - as he only did when there was a battle to fight and an impression to cast upon an enemy. He was not out of breath, nor was his expression touched with worry or concern, and yet . . .
He looked as she must have looked her first time standing in that exact same spot – something exotic and foreign next to Clint's Iowa-born taste for plaid and Laura's matching flair for Midwestern country charm; surrounded by children's toys and a dozen ongoing home improvement projects while the television quietly streamed cartoons in the background. Thinking so, she felt an unexpected flare of amusement cut through the previously grey cast of her grief.
“I felt your distress,” Vision's elegant, cultured timbre filled the air a moment later. “I was unsure whether or not assistance was needed, and I took a chance.”
His words caused something warm to bloom in her chest, reaching out to fill a place next to her heart that she had thought to never fill again. He was worried, so he decided to come to my rescue, she translated what he did not say, even as she smiled to assure him, “Everything is well. There was just a kitchen mishap . . . and a brother mishap,” she added wryly.
“I see,” Vision said in reply, glancing over her shoulder to where she had not quite been able to do away with the burnt smell as easily as she had repaired the more physical harm done. It was something to remember the next time she attempted to use her powers in such a way.
“But everything was mended easily enough,” Wanda continued, and it was now second nature to share her memories with him, letting him glance through the frames of her mind to create a picture of his own. They had talked about the theoretical boundaries of her powers before – together wondering at how HYDRA had seemingly peeled back a layer of her spirit to reveal what was already there, while, unfortunately, for so many others . . .
For a moment, she thought about how frighteningly easy it would be to knit back together the physical with the intangible and contort reality itself into whatever shape she willed it to be . . .someday, even someday soon. But she swallowed those words away; for such thoughts were not for the warmth and comfort of the farm, nor would they ever be.
Instead, Wanda looked down and focused on the smiling child in her arms, only glancing up again when Vision said, “I now understand. Please forgive me my intrusion, then. I was overreaching in my assumptions.”
“Not overreaching,” Wanda did not quite agree. “It was sweet of you; very knight in shining armor, even.”
In her arms, Nathaniel cooed, reaching out towards Vision as if fascinated – for which she could not blame the child for. He was unlike any man she had ever known, in the best of ways.
“Yet,” Vision too looked down at the baby as one equally taken, “as there are no damsels here, it seems that I have come without need.”
He turned to phase back through the door when she found her words bubbling forth before she could stop them. When she spoke, imagined that they felt like bravery. “We are about to watch Star Wars,” she informed him, hating that her speech came out breathlessly quick and jumbled – hopeful, even. “Would you like to stay with us? We have more than enough popcorn to go around.”
Vision looked considering for a moment, but before he could reply, his decision was made for him by Lila's awed gasp from the threshold of the kitchen. “Now he must be able to fly.”
“What makes you think that?” Vision tilted his head, honestly curious as he inquired of the child.
“You have a cape,” Lila sensibly reasoned, her voice sure with her child's logic. “Capes are for flying.”
In reply, Vision's smile was soft, but when he hovered above the ground in answer to the girl's certainty, Lila shrieked in delight, and Vision was then assaulted with her and Cooper's questions as they came with rapid-fire speed. Amused, Wanda balanced Nathaniel on her hip as she moved to the kitchen to take the salad out of the fridge, and she even allowed Vision to take the baby from her so that she could check the pizza in the oven.
When she glanced, there was something soft about Vision's expression as he held the child, and she tucked away a smile to feel how they both looked on each other as if fascinated - their minds rapidly taking in every piece of sensory information they could and filing it away for their developing minds to use in the years to come. The similarity amused her for a moment before she thought that Vision looked at ease with a baby in his arms, and the idea had her blushing for the silly, nonsensical vision she had for the future before pushing it aside with a shake of her head.
Before she knew it, they all had their plates made for dinner, and the children claimed either side of the android on the couch as they filled in his gaps of Star Wars knowledge. They hushed, however, when the triumphant sound of the opening theme burst into the air as the dialogue for A New Hope scrolled across the screen. Wanda sat on the floor with her back to the couch as Nathaniel played with a toy on a blanket next to her, biting into her pizza with relish; they each quite content in their place as the movie started and took their minds far, far away.
By the time The Empire Strikes Back was reaching its mid-way point, they had all eaten more popcorn than, perhaps, was wise - and even Vision had partook of the snack. He had no need to eat, but she had never paused to instead ask him if he had a sense of taste, and his answer had been all she had needed. Nathaniel had long since fallen asleep in her arms, and Lila too was sleeping, curled into Vision's side as if the android was the world's most unconventionally comfortable pillow. On Vision's left, Cooper was determinedly trying to keep his eyes open, but his chin kept on slipping from where he had his elbow propped up on the arm of the couch and his head resting upon his hand, and she then decided that it was time for bed.
Quietly, she first settled Nathaniel in his crib, and Vision carried Lila as she guided Cooper down the hall – subtly curbing his protests so that he would instead give into his body's need for rest, promising to finish their movie marathon first thing in the morning, pajamas and all.
After cleaning up their used dishes and putting the leftovers away, she did not speak to return to the couch, and Vision came to sit next to her, not quite ready yet to leave her for the night. The movie was still playing, even though she knew that they'd only rewatch it in the morning, but it was mostly white noise to her ears as she pooled her head against Vision's chest and felt as he wrapped an arm about her shoulders in return, holding her to him.
Even before . . . whatever it was that was growing between them had flared into being, she had enjoyed leaning against him at the end of a long day. She liked how he raised the surface temperature of his body for her comfort, and she was fascinated by the soft hard feel of the synthetic flesh over his Vibranium muscles and grid-work of iron bones. She knew how he viewed the novelty of touch, and his fingertips were ever sensitive to new sensations, so much so that she did not think twice of him running a hand though her hair, or marveling over the softness of her skin next to the faint scratchiness of cloth and the smooth shapes of the rings she wore on her fingers. Holding her to him, carrying her up and away from the plummeting city of Sokovia, had been the first contact Vision had ever had with another human being after his birth, and he would ever remember that, much as she did.
As for Wanda . . . she had not realized how often she had touched Pietro for comfort and felt him touch her in return until he was gone, and she was grateful for the closeness of another being when she was all but thirsty for such a contact, even when the nature of that contact grew and developed over time.
Lost in her thoughts, she trailed a fingertip over the dark line that ran from his wrist to the crook of his elbow in the imitation of a life-giving vein beneath his skin, and she felt contentment rise to fill her lungs. She breathed out with it, and turned her head to better breathe in his scent of steel and water, along with something sweet, something she could not quite define. Distantly, she reflecting that Clint had thrown out a “no boys, either” clause when Laura had finally tugged him out of the house, and she felt a twinge for disobeying that. But Vision was not a boy, per se, and Clint's tone of voice had not been completely serious, so she did not think . . .
Wanda merely bit her lip, and reasoned: they still had more Star Wars to watch, and she was not yet ready to let him go. Content from making up her mind, she tuned back into the movie when she heard the signature rasp of Darth Vader's voice, and let the plot take her, until -
“You do well with them,” Vision's voice was a quiet murmur in the night, and Wanda felt a ghostly smile touch her mouth when she heard the question therein.
Around them, the old farmhouse creaked, and she breathed in deeply, filling her lungs as she reflected that, perhaps, she could let the Barton's home take one of her secrets, and keep it safe.
“There were not many children at the HYDRA base in Sokovia,” she finally whispered. She spoke into his chest, but knew that he heard her, even so. “We were not foolish, Pietro and I; it only took us days to understand that all was not as we were first led to believe. Very few there were volunteers, and the fate of those who were not there by choice influenced many of our decisions . . . it made us do things, that, perhaps, we would not have done had their lives not hung on the line.”
Wanda swallowed, and found her throat dry to her use. Even with Vision, she could not quite find her words to speak aloud . . . but she would not merely push the memory to him and let him make of it what he would; not for this, not when they deserved more.
“There was one girl there who had nowhere else to go . . . she was no more than Lila's age. They thought that maybe a child's make-up would be a better receptor for their enhancements, but she . . . she did not take the treatment well.” Wanda swallowed, unable to give a voice to the girl's blackened eyes and sallow skin, to her veins visible with tell-tale golden light, no matter how she tried to summon her words. “I could not help her; I could only feel her fade. I was allowed to stay with her, and sooth her as she passed because it developed my own powers . . . I helped her dream of flowers, and I sang to her the lullabies her mother once sang, and she finally left this world in what peace she could.”
For a long moment, her mouth worked, and no sound came out as she remembered the little hand held tightly in her own . . . the small lungs struggling to find her breath, even when her every exhale hurt. Wanda squared her mouth, feeling hatred fill her, raw and untapped, even with the months she'd had to process the full knowledge of HYDRA's dealings . . . and her place within those deeds.
“I never felt out of place with what HYDRA gave to me . . . it simply felt as something right clicking into place . . . and it was the same with Pietro. In the end, we were the only ones left standing, and I have to wonder if the knowledge provided by their deaths helped us live . . . I wonder if it is unnatural, or immoral of me to feel right in my skin when they . . .” but Wanda faltered, only knowing that she shaped a question, even when she was unsure just what that question was.
“Perhaps, I am not the one you should be asking that,” Vision said softly, speaking with a voice that sounded, in part, like JARVIS, while, at times her ears were filled with traces of him . . . but Vision was someone different, something new. He was an entity all his own, a true child of cosmic power and human science, just as she was.
“Then why is it not the same for you as it is for me?” Vision pointed out thoughtfully, having easily caught the thoughts she unconsciously projected to him. She turned his words over in her mind, wondering how he was able to so easily accept what he was, while she . . .
“It is just . . . different,” Wanda felt, even if she could not explain why. “I could not help that little girl, I could not help so many; and those I tried to help by dwelling on my anger . . . on my grief and pain . . . I instead . . . I did not help, and many paid for my mistakes . . . and Pietro was one of those casualties. ”
She did not think that she could ever put her missing, her longing, her guilt, into words, so she instead summoned the feeling of it and shared it with him, trusting him to quantify it where she could not. His mind was a listening ear, and her pains were her voice when she could not speak. She felt his arm tighten around her shoulders, and he was then something solid for her to anchor on, ever keeping her head above the swirling ocean that was her thoughts. For a moment, she closed her eyes to the deep water calm that was the ebb and flow of his mind, and let herself swim.
“I don't remember much of my parents; they are only feelings, impressions, to my mind. But our adoptive family . . . the Maximoffs . . . they felt a lot like this,” she finally whispered. “They felt like . . .” Like eating popcorn on the living room floor . . . like bickering and crayons on the table and toys piled in the corners . . . like falling asleep on the couch and looking forward to eating with a family in the morning . . . like home . . . and I . . .
Wanda breathed in deep, and she felt Vision's voice rustle her hair when he whispered, “I think that I understand.”
In reply, she squeezed his hand, and she felt as he trailed his fingers through her hair, enveloping her as easily as the old farmhouse did. Content in that moment, able to forget her grief and her disquieting whispers for at least a little while, she closed her eyes, trusting him to watch over her sleep while she dreamed.