Work Text:
A year. A full year that she’s felt the loneliness digging itself in her, taking root in her heart and growing, growing until tendril vines seemed to wrap themselves to squeeze her veins. People had come and gone, sure, and she’d found herself with friends-- she snorted at that, cutting off the thought. So called friends, ones that had originally been the ones she tried to kill. How odd that things turned out the ways they did. Especially with how two of them treated her like a child, filling that oddly fatherly role some how. She couldn’t complain though, Barton was ever so nice, and Rogers had the heart of gold. What was there to complain about?
The Sokovian woman couldn’t much think on that though, how they all tried to help her come into her powers, how they helped coax her out of the walls she’d built up with her brother-- Right. That was what everything was about. Her brother. Twin, more specifically. In that year, she’d had to deal without him. That’s where the loneliness stemmed from, an empty garden with dying flowers, no longer with the protection of her blood family.. That ache in her very heart came from that, one that seemed to wash over her in such a sense of following dread, and never could she shake it no matter how she tried. Instead, she hid it beneath her mask, just like she did so much else. A mask of magic and control, of her sheer will to want to hide.
Her fingers bent the slim white edging of the old photo in her hands, and Wanda Maximoff felt like she couldn’t tear her eyes away. The TV was endless chatter to her now, a background noise, all while she stared at the photograph. A moment, frozen in time forever, just below her fingertips. Within, her brother was smiling, a cheesy grin, and had her held close. They were a little younger, just enough to where they had been normal children. Normal.
Wanda snorted again. When had she ever really been normal? The answer to that was simple enough, really. Never. Never.
She sighed, her thumb running across her brother’s smile. It was one that had always given her that hope, along with his positive words and promises, but now they seemed empty. Like hollow words ringing in the back of her mind, all in the voice she’d learned to cherish over the years. But she’d never hear it again. She’d never see him again. He was gone, gone as he’d been the day he died against Ultron in Sokovia, as gone as he was in that moment.
But no matter how she spun it, be it the loss of her twin, much less anything else, the sense of loss and chaos spun webs within her ribs as if to make them ache. There was a twinge of pain, regret, and even blame. For a split moment, she couldn’t even pinpoint what it was exactly. Then it hit her like a sudden avalanche of bricks, plunking one after another upon her head.
Nigeria.
As soon as it came to her mind, her head snapped up, hearing her name amongst the annoying speech on the TV. More blame. More bricks. She watched as the scene replay in front of her eyes, everything she did, everything she wanted to change. It was right there, taunting her, as if pointing and laughing at how helpless she was. Rogers had said she’d done her best, that’d she’d done all she could, but that’s not how she felt. She’d let so many innocents die, and yet how was that any different from other missions? She was the witch painted in scarlet, the blood of those people dripping from her skin.
It seemed to bubble up against her throat, coating her in an ever thick layer of darkness. Screams rung in her ears, but she couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t move, yet she felt as if she were drowning, there was not a singly breath she could even manage to make, the air stuck in her throat.
“You shouldn’t be watching this, you know.‘
The voice snapped her out of it just as the television was off with a click. The blood and darkness was gone, and all that remained was the shattered woman, sitting on her bed, the photo of her and Pietro now crumpled between her fingers. But there stood Rogers, who had once offered a kind smile to her, and was now moving to sit next to her.
His weight made the mattress creak as it shifted, but once he was seated, he brought a hand up, running it across her cheek, wiping away tears she’d not noticed until that moment. With that following silence, he pulled her forward across his chest, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Wanda allowed herself that moment of vulnerability, silent other than the sobs that raked her shoulders into a mere shaking in the captain’s arms.
“It’s my fault. I...I’m...” her words were broken, her accent heavily slurring them together. He only hushed her, truly like a father would his daughter who had just had a nightmare. There were no more words he could honestly tell her, as the silence was truly best. She was thankful for that, because it was something still in her memory. It was just another reminder of family, something she needed most.