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i.
Sokovia remains.
Not that much of the world seems to know this; there is more to Sokovia than just Novi Grad. There are the old cities, the other castles, the towns and villages and hamlets-
(The barn where they had tried to burn her)
-there is a whole country and only half it’s capital was torn into the sky by the destructive whims of a robot child.
Wanda sees the crater that remains and wants to weep.
ii.
Novi Grad had always been their home. New City was its name and that is what it was, new-made after the end of the Second World War, when Sokovia was made it’s own, and so made itself a capital. Even when they left the city that homeless summer they had stayed close, stayed nearby, planned to return as they eventually had.
(Wanda remembers the flashing scarlet as the man had tried to pin her down and knows - knows - that their powers had always been theirs)
Novi Grad was their city. Born there. Orphaned there. Taught and lived and protested there, made anew just outside the city’s limits, in the old looming castle.
Made anew for their city.
(A city, Wanda knows, that is near-destroyed because of them)
iii.
She can feel Pietro’s worry, close to her skin, like a second self, echoing and responding to her mind as he ever has, even before their gifts were truly made open to them. Even when he is unconscious or sleeping or far beyond her range she feels it, knows it like instinct, the same instinct that has always let Pietro know her so well.
They have always known each other as well as they have known themselves, known their city.
(They do not know their city any longer)
iv.
This is home, Wanda thinks, stepping out onto the last remnants of the road into what had been the heart of Novi Grad. She is standing on a precipice; beneath her feet stone and soil cascades into the chasm.
Our fault, Wanda thinks. Our vengeance.
She would remake it if she could. Haul soil and stone and whole homes from elsewhere, make them anew and yet old, to rebuild Novi Grad as it had once stood.
(They have always known their city as well as they do each other. Wanda can sleepwalk the streets of Novi Grad in her dreams, and know how they match to any map)
v.
The air is cold in the bracing way of the mountains, the way it never is at the Avengers Facility. It is fresh and free, and she can taste the woodsmoke and smell the hint of burning rubber that marks this as the city she has always known.
It is layered over though, with the empty breeze, empty of the scents of half of Novi Grad.
She would rebuild it, if she could, rebuild it all, haul stone from the mountain with her scarlet to fill the chasm, remake what was lost in absolute certainty. She knows thinking this will only serve to make Pietro worry more, worry that she will overextend herself and collapse as she had so many times in training.
(“The scarlet is mine,” she had whispered to him when he had worried. “It is not too strong for me. I am too weak for it.”)
She feels his ghosting touch on her arm, as though to pull her back from the edge, but knows he won’t, can’t. They’d agreed that, long ago, when he had locked himself into protecting them, she had vowed to decide for them, to pick their path through the world.
Balance and counterbalance. Pietro would guard and she would guide.
(She has guided them to precipices before, and they have never yet toppled over)
vi.
The church where they had sheltered so many times is gone. Wanda remembers laughing with Pietro at the incongruity of it, lapsed Jews, sceptical of any faith, taking sanctuary from the streets in a church.
It is gone now, gone with half the city, and when Wanda’s eyes search for its dome against the low buildings that had once stood there all she sees is the castle, on the other side of the chasm.
She wonders, briefly, if her scarlet is strong enough, if it could topple the castle into the chasm, and start to fill the great hole up. She doubts it: the castle is so small and the hole so very vast. Even the destruction of the place that had remade them, that had led to this, had given them the powers to cause this, could not help.
(Some chasms, Wanda knows, are too vast for destruction to fill. Sometimes all there is to offer is time, eroding at the rough edges to make a chasm into a valley.)
vii.
There is the graveyard though, and the synagogue still. That, Wanda thinks is something. She remembers, vaguely, sitting through services, the sound of the Hebrew words, the rabbi distinct amongst all the people there. She can see his mind, calmly concerned about who is at the door, as she waits there with her brother.
Sometimes, in the end, even sceptics have to turn back to faith.
viii.
The service is simple. Really, with Novi Grad so destroyed, how can it be else? Wanda knows she has not observed all of the practices - she can barely remember them all, but sees them in the questions of the rabbi’s mind. Does it matter? she wonders. Pietro had died for their city, protecting people, trying, as she had, to make amends.
Pine box, so long hovering at her side held bound by her scarlet, is set into the plot beside Mutti and Vati.
Brother, always at her side, no longer.
ix.
She can feel Pietro still, echoes of his mind, pieces of his blue, whisking through her mind, offering up thoughts. Sometimes she can almost hear his voice, and walking the streets of Novi Grad his voice is clearer than ever.
Her fault, so much of it. She knows, she can hear how Pietro could twist it, point out Stark’s flaws, Stark’s carelessness, how if his bombs had not been they would not have lost their parents, they would not have sought vengeance, Ultron would not have been made, destroyed Novi Grad, killed her brother.
But he isn’t there. His words echo in empty streets, in ghost streets, as she walks, hovering, over the chasm. Eyes shut, floating out over empty space, walking the path they had followed from school to bakery to shelter at the church. The path from the church to the cafe and the pub where they had done shifts.
Wanda walks the paths in empty air. She can hear Pietro’s voice, feel his presence, but he isn’t there. She can see, all to clearly, his coffin being set into the ground by her own scarlet, etched permanently into the back of her eyelids.
She wonders if she could remake the city, rebuild what she had destroyed, undo what she had done, see her brother brought back from the dead and show her, with teasing smiles, the perspective that voice alone cannot convince her of.
(In her heart of hearts she doubts it)