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Pietro is leaning against the door, arms crossed, that little smirk on his mouth, his eyes warm with approval and a bit of productive competition.
Wanda blinks, and the Black Widow is pinning her to the floor with an arm across her throat.
"What was that?" Romanov demands. "Your focus just evaporated."
Wanda can't help but glance toward the door, and Romanov's sharp gaze follows. "What? What is it?"
"Nothing," Wanda says. "Sorry. Sorry. Let's go again."
Natasha stands back, offers Wanda a hand up. Wanda is amazed at the Avengers, their openness and willingness to give her a second shot at life. She nearly destroyed them from within — the Hulk is still missing — and yet here she is, accepted within their ranks. The Black Widow pulls no punches, but neither is she vengeful.
Natasha looks Wanda up and down, and whatever she sees makes her shake her head.
"I think we can be done with hand to hand for today. Get in some cardio, your heart rate is still too high."
"Thank you," Wanda says, with a little tip of her head she can't seem to hold back. It doesn't seem like Romanov could be much more than ten years her senior, but Wanda can't help but defer to her as she would to a master.
Natasha's fine brows draw together slightly, but she returns the nod, decisively.
Across the room, Steve Rogers is sparring with Sam Wilson. Rogers is holding back, but Wilson is sweating hard. The Avengers know that pushing through that edge is the only thing that keeps them alive.
Pietro brushes her shoulder, a comfort she has never been without, till now.
Wanda goes to the pool, changes into her suit, and begins to do laps. Six weeks ago, she hadn't even known how to swim, but now, she glides easily through the water, every stroke improving her strength and endurance.
Pietro stares up at her from the bottom of the pool, wearing a bright smile and nothing else, bubbles streaming out of his nostrils. His fine blond hair undulates around his face — he's so happy, so relaxed.
So dead.
Wanda thrusts herself out of the pool, pads blindly to the lockers. Mindlessly she showers the chlorine out of her hair, throws her wet suit into the laundry, dresses.
Pietro falls in step beside her on her way back to her quarters. She knows his pace so well. She feels the heat he gives off. His particular scent — the scent of her twin — wafts across her senses.
He is not real.
He is gone.
The sun sets. Wanda drifts to the refectory for the evening meal.
Fighters in training require a high caloric intake, and Rogers has mandated that all meals be taken in common unless there are extenuating circumstances, to build morale and camaraderie. Four hearty meals are served daily, from 6-7 am, 11 to noon, 4- 5 pm, and 9 − 10. Rogers sits down next to her.
"Your brother did very well today," he remarks.
"What?" she gasps.
"You did well," Rogers repeats, easily. "Natasha's not an easy person to spar with. You held your own. Good work. JANIS tells me your swim times are improving as well."
Reeling, Wanda tries to stay calm. She has seen inside Rogers's mind; he's not a man who is intentionally cruel. "Thanks," she says faintly.
He sets to his beef stew with the will of a man who thrives at ten thousand calories a day. Stark theorizes that the Twins' enhancement draws on universal energy, not on their metabolism — but Banner isn't there to help develop the theory, and Stark is taking a holiday. The stew is tasty though, and the training has given her an appetite.
"Delicious," Pietro mutters, wolfing his stew.
"It really is," Rogers concurs.
Wanda blinks and her brother is gone.
She's finding it hard to sleep. Her room is pleasant. Quarters at the Avengers facility are the last thing from Spartan. Everyone living on base receives an identical suite: bed, bath, sitting room: small but comfortable. JANIS has unlimited access to information and entertainment, free and open to everyone. Wanda wonders how much the new AI reports back to Stark or to Rogers or to Hill and Fury, but the soft voice assures her that her preferences will remain private unless safety concerns dictate otherwise.
"More porn," Pietro advises, leering at Wanda from his end of the couch.
Wanda wears herself out crying, Pietro warm against her back, his breath in her hair, his soothing touch the final bridge to Lethe.
When JANIS wakes her at 5 am, his pillow is pristine.
Breakfasts at the Avengers facility are the finest Wanda has ever imagined. Meat, fish, eggs, granola, yogurt, pancakes, waffles, bread, preserves — it boggles the mind. Pietro nibbles a croissant with marmalade, laughing as buttery crumbs cascade down his shirtfront. Wanda smiles, near tears. She finishes his croissant.
"I like him," Pietro says as she makes her way to the meditation room.
She doesn't answer. There's no need between them for words out loud.
"Take him to bed," Pietro urges.
Wanda frowns, but laughs.
"What's worthy and floaty and red all over?" Pietro jokes.
Wanda is still smiling when the Vision greets her, his eyes disconcertingly human peering out of perfect features beneath the glimmering Mind Gem.
"Good morning, Wanda, Pietro," the Vision says as he stands.
Wanda freezes. The room is empty except for herself and the android.
The Vision's head tilts to one side as he studies her. "You are alone," he says doubtfully. His head tilts again, the other way. "You are not alone," he states with certainty.
"Sharp," Pietro laughs in her ear.
Wanda takes an agonized breath, putting her hands to her head. "Help me," she whispers, falling to her knees.
In a sliver of an instant, the android is kneeling where she has collapsed.
"Help her," Pietro echoes. He is there, but so faint, like a faded photograph.
He is gone.
He is there, as real as she is. "Help her!" he shouts at the Vision.
The android looks right at him, her twin, the other half of her heart. The android looks right at her, inside her mind, and she looks back.
She is carried by an underground river, rushing through darkness, little bioluminescent creatures clinging to the walls, and she realizes the tiny glowing things are worlds, are galaxies, and the rushing stream is the universe, time and energy and matter, the very scheme of existence.
The clarity of your perception is admirable, the Vision conveys to her.
What — where — she tries to ask.
The gem, he says simply.
She tries to hang on. The rushing feeling escalates and pours her out into a gleaming world of crystalline structures, blinding in its coruscating complexity. There is far too much information. She can't handle it.
Sorry, I'll try to tone it down, he says.
What was that, she wonders, weakly.
Me, he says.
O, she thinks, in open and awed appreciation.
You are well, he says, looking deep inside her. You are not hallucinating.
Abruptly Wanda pulls away, back into the real world. Pietro lounges on a cushion in the far corner of the meditation room, staring out the floor to ceiling windows at the meadows and the woods beyond, munching an apple he's swiped from the refectory.
Wanda squinches her eyes closed and turns away.
"You're not dreaming," the Vision says.
"Please," she begs, not sure what she's asking.
"Look at me," the android suggests, and she does. His human eyes, made of some alloy of vibranium; the spark of his soul, the gift of a gem that is a fragment of Creation Itself; catalyzed into life by a young god of lightning, a god who saw Ragnarok and needed to bring into being a kinder, lovelier Vision.
Wanda sees into those human eyes. She sees the Vision for what he is — a young and exuberant soul, an ancient wise force of creation, a being who is trying on being a man; a synthetic man casts himself into a river with a witch to see if they will drown.
Wanda wonders if this is what it feels like, drowning.
Pietro makes subtle signs at her with the tips of his fingers. To anyone watching, he is twitching. To her, it is their lifelong language. Do it, do it, you know you want him, take him, he's yours! To anyone watching, he is...
is he
a sunbeam dancing in the corner of the room
a young man with sun bright hair and a gleaming grin
ripples across the surface of a river
never the same water twice
do it, his fingertips urge
Wanda leans closer to the Vision. The Vision leans closer to her. She is floating. He is floating. They are weightless, spinning slowly a few inches above the tatami of the Avengers meditation room. Their lips gently touch. He does not breathe. He tastes like water. His skin is just slightly above room temperature. The diaphanous cloak that falls organically from his shoulders drifts around them, solar gold, free of a breeze. His hands are so gentle, closing around her upper arm, the side of her jaw. He kisses her. Pietro smiles.
"It is a human tradition," the android whispers, "to ask a close relation for a blessing, when stating one's intentions."
Wanda nods, wanting more kisses.
Steve Rogers has given his blessing, the Vision murmurs in her mind, lips busy, but I think I should ask your brother.
"Ask my brother," Wanda says, her heart sinking, full of grief. She sinks to the floor, heavy as lead.
"Pietro Lehnsherr Maximoff," the Vision says, as formal as can be. "I want to court your sister, and desire your blessing."
"Sure," Pietro says, finishing his apple. He tosses the core at the small trashcan near the door. The core flies true and the basket falls over. "Bullseye!" he laughs.
Wanda blinks.
Pietro is there, waving his fists in the air, victorious. The basket rocks on its side, stills.
Wanda looks at the Vision, his compassion, his desire.
"You are more powerful than you can imagine," he says, calm and sure. "Your power may alter belief, but your belief alters the very threads of reality."
"But — isn't that — wrong? dangerous? to bring back a man from —" Even now, she can't say it. She hasn't been able to say it since she tore the heart out of Ultron. Now, it seems that denial has its uses.
"How could Life be wrong? Every life is dangerous," the Vision says, tilting his head from one side to the other.
"I'm late for sparring," Pietro says. "The Black Widow will skin me — if I'm lucky," he says with a leer. His fingertips say, kiss him some more. His eyes say, I'm so happy for you.
Wanda looks into the Vision, he shares her joy, and it is good.