Wanda Maximoff (highlyconnected) wrote in avengers_logs, @ 2018-03-04 01:48:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | -complete, pietro maximoff, wanda maximoff |
Who: Wanda & Pietro Maximoff
What: Reunion
When: An hour or so after this
Rating/Warnings: Green
It would seem his sister had forgotten all the life lessons they’d learned along the way if the unlocked window of her hotel room was anything to go by. Hopefully she had not forgotten all the lessons as many of them were important and vital to survival, but if what the Dr Stephen Strange had said was true perhaps she did not need to remember.
He had no change of clothes so he was still clad in the ones he had died in, but Pietro was too focused on speeding around his sister’s room in an impatient manner to concern himself with that.
The wait felt eternal but a glance at the clock told him that he had only been there five or ten minutes at most, time was excruciatingly painful for Pietro, especially as he lived so much of it in fast forward.
He stopped by a nearby desk and picked up a familiar necklace on a long chain and he paused long enough to open the locket, revealing the faces of their parents and Pietro’s brow furrowed.
Wanda felt better than she had in a long time. There had been an agreement that she would work with Doctor Strange - Stephen - in order to better control her abilities and she was filled with a strange sense of hope that she would learn more about the magic that he used, perhaps with the ability to combine it with her own powers and further allow her to change the world for the better. She wanted to make the world that she and Pietro had dreamed of when they were shivering in doorways, reliant on sleight of hand to survive.
It had all seemed possible for a short moment but then he was gone and Sokovia fell. She’d been ready to die then, prepared to join her brother in the afterlife and she had been so angry with the Vision when he had saved her. It took her a long time to start living again, even longer to start feeling like she was alive. But there was a hollow feeling in her chest that never went away, an emptiness in her soul. A part of her had died that day and heading back to a hotel room where she would be alone - even though Clint was just a phone call or message away - it was just a reminder that she was now alone in a way that she had never really been before.
As she put the keycard into the door and pushed it open, she was immediately aware of another person in her room. Before the door even opened properly her hands were lifted, catching the body of the person who had intruded into her room in a magenta aura and flinging them against the wall, pinning them there as she walked in, hands raised and eyes glowing red. The lights went out with the force of her powers as they stretched through the room, meaning that she wasn’t able to actually see the
“You have five seconds,” she said, voice dark and thick with warning, “to tell me why you are in my room and what you want before I push you through the wall.”
Pietro’s eyes widened as he was caught up in his sister’s powers and immediately pinned against the nearby wall. He knew well enough that struggling was pointless as he had seen many people try and fail, miserably.
“Now, sister,” he began, “is that any way to greet your brother?”
His presence here was impossible, he knew that and she knew that, but magic it would seem had ways of working that were beyond Pietro’s comprehension but he was alive and was not about to waste another second of it not seeing his sister.
Wanda froze at the sound of a voice she had started to forget. One hand remained pinning the intruder to the wall while the other made a sweeping gesture towards the curtains, ripping them off the wall and flooding the room with light.
It took a second for her eyes to acclimatise to the light but when they did, her eyes widened and her mouth opened in shock. Pinned against the wall was Pietro. But that was impossible, Pietro was dead, she felt it happen, the bullets pushing through her body and the life leaving him. She mourned him - she still continued to do so.
But he was there.
Her powers abruptly withdrew into herself, pulling back from him fast enough that they upset and upturned everything between them and she stumbled backwards, one hand covering her mouth and the other bracing her weight against the wall because she felt like her knees were going to give out.
In fact, a second later, they did.
Only she didn’t have the chance to hit the ground as soon as Pietro was freed from her power he was immediately at her side, one arm beneath her legs and the other curled around her upper body so she was in fact cushioned long before Wanda had a chance to fall to the ground.
It was a familiar hold, one he had done often and frequently when they had moved from one place to another.
“You are not happy to see me?” He questioned mock seriously.
Wanda found herself asking if this was it. If she had finally lost her grip on sanity as had been such a concern immediately following Pietro’s death. If this was the moment that her mind finally cracked under the pressure and stress and loneliness. That the catatonic state she had fallen into after Pietro’s death and Sokovia’s destruction had finally taken its toll on her mind. That her time in a straight jacket and a collar that shocked her every time she moved had finally broken her mind. But her hands touched his chest, his shoulders, one arm draped around them in a way that had been familiar to her for such a long time. Her fingers roamed up over his face and then through his hair. He felt so real.
Her lips trembled, she felt her eyes burning.
“This is not possible,” she breathed, her hand finally cupping his cheek, unable to take her eyes off of his face or stop touching him. “How- how is this possible?”
Pietro let her touch as he knew that she worried that sometimes her mind would betray her and feeling something or rather someone under her hands would go a long way to reassuring Wanda that he was real and he was there.
“I do not know,” he admitted with a shake of his head as he caught one of the hands now on his face before dropping an affectionate kiss to her palm. “But I am here and however the means I will not look a gift horse in the mouth. I think that is the saying but I could be wrong.”
He offered her an all too familiar smile.
Familiar it may have been but seeing it cross his face too her breath away. She may have had a picture of her parents but all she had of Pietro had been her memories. The more time that passed following his death the more details started to fade. She’d started to forget the sound of his voice and of his laugh. The way his lips curled up when he smiled. The feel of his arms around her.
When she blinked, tears rolled down her cheeks and she drew in a sharp breath when he kissed the palm of her hand. She had never thought she would see him again, she never thought that she would have-
“It has been three years,” she told him, her voice quavering. She took another breath in, trying to bring herself to composure. Her powers fluctuated around them, pulsing unsteadily and she needed to bring them into control. She needed to not be a danger to anyone.
Three years?
Pietro’s eyes widened at the realisation that he had been gone so long. Too long. He noticed the way that her powers reacted and immediately he gathered her up more firmly into his arms at which point he murmured a few soft reassuring words in their native tongue.
This was not too dissimilar to what he had done when they had first come into their powers.
“I’m back now, sister. No more being a hero, I promise.”
“You cannot promise me that,” she told him softly, even as he pulled her close.
She wriggled a little, using her powers to levitate herself out of his arms so that her feet were on the floor. This allowed her to wrap her arms fully around his shoulders, press herself against him fully and hide her face against the curve of his neck.
Their minds weren’t linked anymore, she realised, as his arms were tight around her shoulders and back, clutching her tightly against his chest, she could still feel that emptiness in her mind.
“Nor can I promise that to you.”
“I cannot?” Pietro queried as his arms naturally came around Wanda’s waist before one hand lifted to touch her hair reassuringly. “Is there something about this world that you know that I do not?” They could leave, go on the run, live their lives as they wanted without care or concern for anything or anyone besides themselves.
Though she was right, she couldn’t promise the same, not if she was an Avenger.
“I’m told you are an Avenger now?”
“I think it is what we would have done had you-” her voice cut off again and she kissed his cheek, tipping into the touch to her hair before she drew away. She waved her hand to clean up the mess that had been made by her powers. It was hard to talk about Sokovia. Even now, even with Clint, she did not talk about it. Whenever he tried to bring up her grief, she had no desire to discuss it.
She wet her lower lip and picked up the locket from where it had fallen when she’d pushed Pietro against the wall with her powers. She opened it and looked inside before she turned her attention back to her brother.
“But I am an Avenger no more. I believe the only Avengers left are Tony Stark and the Vision.”
Pietro watched Wanda closely, the words of Stephen Strange fresh in his mind, and he was right. She was different, he didn’t even need to exchange too many words to know that, he just did.
He still had the welcome package that he had been given, left on the desk, the very package he had yet to look at. His only thought when he’d realised he was alive again was to find Wanda.
Unable to remain still Pietro took to moving around the room, idly touching and familiarising himself.
“Not a bad place this room.”
Wanda turned her head to track Pietro’s movements. When he stopped and commented on the room, Wanda resisted the urge to go to him, wrap her arms around his waist and remind herself - once again - that he was alive, that he was real.
“You are welcome to stay, if you would like?” she offered, almost tentatively.
Giving in and crossing the distance between them, her fingers caught on the bullet holes on his clothes, gently touching the skin underneath and remembering how it felt to have bullets riddling her body, how she felt the pain as if it were her own. She had destroyed Ultron’s final body after that, ripped the central processing unit - his heart - right out and held it in her hand.
Her hands roamed again, over his upper arm and then to his face again, cupping his cheeks with both hands.
“We should get you some different clothes.”
“Why would I not want to stay?” Pietro asked, genuinely confused. He might have a room of his own but they had stayed doorways and much smaller spaces so sharing a room would not be difficult. He did however turn his head when Wanda approached him and her hands roamed over the various bullet holes that once littered his body.
When her hands eventually stilled on his face his own lifted to curl around her wrists where his grip tightened and the warmth of his skin seeped into her much cooler touch.
“I was hoping you might say that.”
“That I might say what?” Wanda asked, eyes drifting to look at the way Pietro’s hands curled around her wrists to still her touch. “That you could stay or that we can get you more clothes? You cannot walk around the city dressed like this.”
She wet her lower lip, “I can ask Clint to bring us some clothes for you. Then we can explore the city. You did not get a chance before you-”
“Both?” Pietro said with a smile as he watched her closely, noticing the lack of her in his mind but then death had a funny way of ripping away connections like that.
He reached out to catch her face in his hands and ducked down until he was in her eye line. “I’m here now,” Pietro reminded her. “Is that not all that matters?”
Wanda caught his wrists with her hands, squeezing gently before she reached up and mimicked the touch, cupping his face and drawing him closer until their foreheads were touching.
She closed her eyes.
“Yes,” she breathed, “yes, it is.”