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“Wanda... Wanda!” a harsh whisper called out. Wanda yawned and rolled over in bed to meet Pietro’s face peering over the edge of the top bunk.
“Pietro, do you know what time it is?” she asked groggily.
“Yeah, it’s almost midnight, you know what that means.” he whispered excitedly.
“No. I don’t know what that means. Now go back to sleep.” she reached over and pushed his head down. She rolled over and bundled back up under the thin blankets that weren’t of much use in the Sokovian winter (or any season for that matter). Just as she was getting comfortable again, a pillow landed on her head with much more force than it normally would have.
“Ow! What the heck Pietro?” she shot up and looked over the bunk to see him holding the pillow over his head, ready to take another swing at her.
“It was to wake you up.” he smiled devilishly. “And be quiet, you don’t want to wake up Mrs.Kafka.” he jabbed a finger towards their bedroom door. There was a faint glow from the television set in the living room passing underneath the door, where Mrs.Kafka was currently sleeping. Wanda doubted that the old lady was still awake at this hour, but she thought it best not to test how light of a sleeper she was and get yelled at again this evening.
She sighed and dropped her voice down to a whisper. “Why do you want me to be up so badly?” she asked angrily. Pietro pointed to the alarm clock on their nightstand, it was eleven forty-five. “It’s fifteen minutes til midnight and the old woman is sleeping.”
“Your point?”
“We can finally go out and see the fireworks for once! Mom and dad aren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow morning so why not?”
Wanda’s eyes lit up at the thought of finally being able to see the New Year’s fireworks without her parents for once. Not that she didn’t enjoy going with them each year to watch, it was just that she and Pietro were eight now and they never got to do anything on their own. It was embarrassing to show up to school each day with their mom or dad regardless of the fact that they had each other and that their school was only a ten minute walk. But going out also meant possibly being caught by Mrs.Kafka, and that was the last thing that she wanted to happen. If their parents found out that they’d gotten in trouble with the old lady yet again, things weren’t likely to go in their favor over the new year.
“I know that face.” Pietro said. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. I am the brains in this operation after all.” she replied.
Her brother groaned and hopped up onto her bunk. “Wanda, it’s just one night of our crappy lives, what harm could it do if mom and dad find out? We have our whole lives ahead of us for them to get over it if they find out.”
“Jeez you sound like an idiot.”
“A smart idiot.”
Wanda rolled her eyes but couldn’t help but to laugh at her brother. What harm could one night out do? It wasn’t like they didn’t have anything to fear from being caught aside from Mrs.Kafka’s shouting and their parents giving them dish duty for a month.
“Fine.” she said, finally giving in. “Let’s go see some stupid fireworks.” A grin broke out across Pietro’s face. He slid off of the top bunk, went to the closet and tossed Wanda’s coat at her. “Come on lil sis. Let’s go see some fireworks!”
Wanda rolled her eyes and laughed. “We’re only twelve minutes apart.”
“Let’s go twelve minute younger sis.”
They got dressed quickly and opened the bedroom door, tip toeing past Mrs.Kafka who was asleep on the couch, and out the door into the bitter cold night that would soon be illuminated with fireworks.
The sheets on the cot were stiff and itchy, making the scratches and cuts on Wanda’s legs become more and more irritated by the second. She was cursing herself for giving her only blanket to that old lady at dinner earlier.
Stop it Wanda. She thought angrily. She immediately regretted her thoughts and buried her face into the stiff mattress, almost as if she was trying to push the thought out of her head.
“She needed it more than you.” she whispered into the sheets. “She was an old lady whose frail and broken and needed it more than you, and, and,” Wanda stopped talking. Her face started to grow hot and not soon after tears began to roll from her eyes. She sobbed silently into the mattress, not wanting to wake up the other refugees sleeping around her.
“Shut up will you?!” someone whispered a few cots down. “Some of us are trying to sleep here.”
Wanda lifted her head up from her pillow and wiped her face clean as best she could with her shirt sleeve. She looked around the room, there was nothing but cots and the sleeping bodies of the hundreds of other refugees around her, all displaced from the air raids that had destroyed half the city, and killed her parents.
“Wanda.” Pietro whispers on the cot next to her. “Are you alright?” She shakes her head, wiping a tear from her cheek. He got up and sat next to Wanda. “Do you wanna go for a walk?”
“We’ll get in trouble with the guards.” she replied quietly.
“We’ll just say that you need some fresh air. They can’t say no to a pair of adorable ten year old and a crying girl.”
Despite the darkness, Wanda knew he was smirking at her. She wiped her nose and nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
They grabbed their shoes and coats that were stashed beneath their cots and quietly walked among the hundreds of other refugees in the makeshift triage center that had come up in the high school gym.
Pietro was right about the guards, they didn’t argue much, in fact they didn’t even stop to listen to all of Pietro’s lie when they saw Wanda crying. Once outside, they started down the street in the direction of their old neighborhood.
The air was so cold that Wanda swore she could feel her tears freezing on her cheeks. For several minutes, they didn’t speak, just walked through the demolished streets and past groups of people that had been tossed out of other triage centers for whatever reason. She averted their gaze as she passed, the guards had warned them about thieves stealing coats and boots from anyone they could.
“Where are we going?” she asked through chattering teeth.
“To the town square.” Pietro replied.
Wanda knitted her eyebrows together. “We can’t get in there, it’s blocked off by the police.”
Pietro sighed, trying to be patient, something he had never been very good at. “I overheard some of the police talking about a New Year’s party in the town square with anyone who wasn’t on patrol.”
“Why were you listening to the police?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is that we can watch the fireworks again tonight.”
Wanda sighed. She couldn’t believe that even in the middle of everything with their parents dying, the air raids, and just this stupid war in general, Pietro was still obsessed with seeing some stupid fireworks.
“Did you just use me as a pawn to get outside the gym?” she asked.
“No! Of course not! I wasn’t going to go if I didn’t think this would make you feel better.” he said.
Suddenly, Pietro pulls Wanda by her hand behind a parked car. They had reached the town square and Wanda could see a group of officers standing around a bonfire that they had built from debris and trash that hadn’t been cleaned up from the air raids. They laughed drunkenly, swapping tales about various things they’d gone through on previous patrols. She and Pietro sat silently, hoping that none of them would decide to walk over to the car. Sure, all they could do is yell at them and escort them back to their triage center, but it was something that the both of them would like to avoid.
They sat in silence for several minutes on the frozen concrete. Wanda bit down on her lip to keep her teeth from chattering, although she doubted that the officers would be able to hear it over their conversations and laughter.
“These better be the best fireworks in the world.” Wanda hissed through her teeth.
Pietro gave a shaky laugh through his shivering. “If these aren’t the best, most amazing, mind blowing fireworks in Sokovian history, I’ll let you beat me up tomorrow.”
“You mean next year?” Wanda quipped.
“Oh hardy har har.” Pietro said sarcastically. He leaned up from his spot and peered over the top of the car’s hood. His face lit up as brightly as the bonfire in the town square. “Wanda, Wanda look I think they’re starting.” he swatted her arm excitedly.
Wanda scooted over and moved up to her knees. Surely enough, the police officers were lighting sparklers in the bonfire and setting up fireworks at the far end of the square. A few seconds later, a shrill whistling sound filled the air as the rocket took off into the night sky and exploded in a flash of blues and whites.
Another rocket went off, this time showcasing bright oranges and yellows. For a fleeting moment, the heaviness and sadness in Wanda’s chest seemed to be lifted away with each firework that took off into the night.
Neither she or Pietro said a word as they sat engrossed in the colorful display ahead of them. As the pile of fireworks got down to the last few, she and Pietro got up and began to make their way back to the triage center, hoping they could make it past the guards without having to explain why they were gone for so long.
“Thanks for that.” Wanda said.
“No problem.” Pietro says. “Honestly, I think both of us needed that. Really beats being in there.” he points towards the school that was coming into view.
They managed to make it past the guards with minimal questions and suspicion (it looked like one of their fellow officers had managed to slip them a few bottles of beer while they’d been gone). When they were back to their designated sleeping areas, everything seemed a bit less harsh and comfortable than it had before.
The ceiling rattled again, sending another wave of dust and debris onto Wanda’s head. She sighed and wiped the particles out of her hair, she and Pietro had grown used to the nightly testing of other volunteers in the levels above their underground holding cells.
She leaned her head against the wall and started humming a song that her mother used to sing to her during back in the days when air raids and bombings would light up the sky. While her humming did nothing to drown out the noise and dust falling onto her head, it would offer her some peace of mind as she struggled to get adjusted to her newfound powers and abilities.
After a few minutes, she began to sing aloud, something that was usually reprimanded by the Hydra guards posted outside their doors all hours of the day. It was an old song, something that she used to hear the elderly women sing on the choir in church when she was a child. It was like a lament to the lord to deliver them from whatever hardships and worries they had in their lives at the moment, a fitting song given the situation she and Pietro were currently in.
One of the guards took notice of her singing and banged on the glass sliding door and shouted at her in some language she didn’t know. She rolled her head to look at the guard and continued to sing. Of all the things Hydra had taken from her in the last year, she refused to let them take what little joy she could bring herself on New Year's’ Eve.
The guard banged on the door again and continued to shout at her. Wanda was tempted to give her powers a test run on him and make him see those Cocker Spaniel puppies she knew he was afraid of, but decided against it. Finally, the guard gave up his attempts to silence her and walked off, grumbling in his unknown language.
Once he was out of sight, Wanda called out to her brother on the other side of her cell wall. “Pietro, are you awake?” she asked.
“It’s impossible to sleep with all this racket.” she heard his voice come through the vent that connected their cells.
“It’s impossible to sleep in here at all,” Wanda said, “regardless of the noise.”
“True. But it would be easier to at least get a thirty minute nap in if they weren’t constantly holding their own firework show upstairs.”
Wanda couldn’t help but laugh at that. How ironic that Pietro bring up the one thing that they hadn’t missed on New Year’s Eve ever since they were eight. They hadn’t spent a single New Year’s apart since that day, not as if they had much of a choice either. With their parents killed when they were ten, their country in the midst of a civil war, leaving them displaced and without a home, they had to stick together. Wanda found it amazing that even in the middle of all of their struggles and hardships, each year they would manage to get to the roof of whatever building they were closest to and watch the fireworks and ring in the new year together. It felt wrong to her that for the first time in years, they wouldn't be able to fulfill their yearly ritual.
“We could just pretend that the experiments are fireworks.” Wanda suggested.
She heard Pietro laugh on the other side of the wall. “That’s kind of fucked up, don’t you think?”
“True, but our lives have been fucked up since we were ten. What difference is this going to make?” He didn’t reply.
She sighed and got up from the wall to lie down on her cot. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, humming her song yet again. Another wave of debris rained down from the ceiling and onto Wanda’s face.
“If you close your eyes, it kinda sounds like fireworks.” Pietro’s voice drifted in from the vent. Wanda let out a little laugh. Amazing how her brother could manage to keep a positive attitude no matter the situation. She smiled and closed her eyes, imagining that they were eight years old again, standing on an icy bench in the town square, staring in amazement as the sky lit up with a fiery fusion of colors.
Seven months, never before had seven months seemed like an eternity to her. She was alone, as she usually was during her free time. The rest of the team always tried to get her out to take her mind off of training and Pietro’s death. Usually it would work, Wanda had to admit that her new friends were supportive and willing to go out of their way to ensure that she was holding it together, especially Vision. But today was different. It was New Year’s Eve and Wanda felt like she had been cut in half all over again just like that day in Sokovia when Pietro died.
She was alone in the Avengers facility save a few scientists and agents who had nowhere else to be tonight. Sam and Steve had gone out on some mission that they refused to tell anyone about while the rest of the New Avengers had gone out together with Rhodey to some party that Tony was throwing in Manhattan. When Natasha had come to ask if she was interested in going with them, Wanda lied and said that she had cramps and wanted to stay rather than make the trek into the city. She knew that her lie wouldn’t go over Nat’s head, but the spy didn’t push any further and left her alone.
Wanda was sitting on the roof, bundled up in an Afghan blanket that Steve had made her for Christmas (who knew the Super Soldier could knit?). She ran the memory of every New Year’s Eve that she and Pietro had spent together ever since they were eight. She laughed as she remembered the year when they had turned eighteen and had almost gotten arrested for stealing wine and cigarettes from the grocery store. Each year held some memory that the two of them would laugh over some months later, even when they were nine and had gotten in trouble with Mrs.Kafka for taking her matches and setting sparklers off in the stairwell as they watched fireworks from the inside of their apartment building.
All of the positive emotions that Wanda had remembered from the years before shattered as she thought of the last New Year’s Eve they spent together last year in the Hydra facility. She exhaled heavily, watching her breath swirl out in front of her, feeling completely drained and numb. For the first time in over a decade, she wasn’t with her brother on their favorite night of the year. Somehow the cell walls separating them in the Hydra facility seemed much better than this, this emptiness that filled her now. She rolled her lips together and shut her eyes, trying her hardest not to cry.
“Tears won’t bring them back.” she remembered Pietro always telling her whenever she’d slip into a depressive episode when they were younger. “But talking about it will. So tell me what’s wrong.”
“You’re not here, that’s what’s fucking wrong.” Wanda said to herself. “You’re not here, and it’s New Year’s Eve, and there aren’t any fucking fireworks, and everything is fucking awful!” She hadn’t realized that her voice had risen to a shout, echoing out into the empty night.
“Wanda?” a soft voice spoke up from the darkness. Wanda jumped at the disturbance. She turned to see Vision hovering on the other side of the roof. She sighed in relief and answered them. “I thought you’d gone with the other’s to Tony’s party.”
They looked down at their hands and chuckled. “I’m not sure a bright red android with a space rock in their forehead would go over well at a party full of humans.”
Wanda allowed herself a short laugh. She couldn’t deny that Vision was pretty snarky for an android, but then again she hadn’t met many of them so her opinion didn’t have much to go on. Vision dropped down onto the roof and started toward her.
“May I?” they asked, gesturing towards the ground beside her. Wanda nodded and scooted over to give them more space.
“So why aren’t you at Stark’s party?” they asked her. “You don’t have a rock sticking out of your forehead, so what’s your excuse?”
Wanda’s first reaction was to tell them to fuck off and go back inside. This was too personal and too deeply rooted into the relationship she’d had with her brother for her to just blab away to an android she’d known for half a year. But instead, she wrapped herself tighter in her blanket and sighed. Being rude and distant wasn’t going to help her get better. It hadn’t helped when her parents had been killed and it wasn’t going to help now. At least this time around she had more than just her brother to talk to about what was wrong, although she would have much rather preferred it to be the other way around.
“Is it your brother?” Vision asked.
“It’s more than just Pietro.” she answered. “Every year we would go out on New Year’s Eve and watch fireworks together.” she laughed at her response. It had seemed normal to her when it was just she and Pietro going out every year, but now saying it aloud to someone else made it seem childish and something that they should have outgrown years ago.
“And now, here I am, alone on New Year’s without so much as a picture of him to at least pretend that he’s here.”
“And no fireworks.” Vision added.
“That too.” she sighed.
They sat in silence, looking out at the forests that surrounded the facility and the clear sky. Amazing that on the one night that she felt like absolute shit, the night was damn near perfect, even the weather was out to mock her.
“I haven’t been around long enough to understand the relationship you had with your brother,” Vision started suddenly, “and even when I am old enough to understand human emotions fully, I still won’t be able to comprehend what you two had. It was something so much more than the love Captain Rogers has for his teammates and even more than what Clint has for his family, and to me, that is amazing.
Even after all those years of going through things that should have proved to the both of you that love is something futile and useless in such a harsh life, you and your brother held onto that, and you still hold onto it today after he’s gone. That should mean so much more to you than a picture and fireworks.”
Wanda was taken aback at their answer. She knew they was right of course, but she still couldn’t allow herself to not feel bitter towards them. How dare they intrude on her when she clearly wanted to be alone? Not only that, but how and why would they go out of their way to tell her how she should heal? She balled her hands into fists underneath her blanket and was tempted to hit Vision with an energy blast and lock herself somewhere within the facility.
“Your eyes are red.” Vision said beside her. “Have I upset you?”
She turned her head away from them and shut her eyes, fighting back the tears that were wanted to betray her. She felt Vision put a hand on her shoulder and she broke like a dam. Sobbing like a child, shoulders heaving as she gasped for breath, and her cheeks redder from her crying than being in the cold air.
Tears won’t help you. Pietro’s voice rang in her head. Talk to them. Make it right Wanda.
Wanda nodded her head. “I’ll make it right.” she whispered to herself. She wiped her face as best as she could on her blanket and sat up straight. She turned to Vision, their face was gentle and patient, something she desperately needed at the moment.
She took one last shaky breath before exhaling and letting herself relax. “You weren’t planning on doing anything important tonight, were you?” she asked them. Vision simply shook their head. “Good, because I have to tell you everything.”
A small smile came across the android’s face and they sat and listened, not once interrupting as Wanda started with the first night when they were eight, to the last night in the Hydra facility. As she started and finished each story, she could feel a little bit of her sadness and recent fall away, and by the time the New Year was being rung in, she had finally let go of her old traditions and rituals and allowed herself to grow anew in the new year.