A/N. Hello! Before you read this, I would like to acknowledge a few things. 1) There is a lot that is implied. I left it like that on purpose. The story mostly focuses on Wanda's grief and I wanted that to be the main focus of the story. 2) I have done some research on the subject and the results were inconclusive, so I've decided that the twins are inhumans. They don't know that, obviously, but they are. I have also decided that all enhanced are either inhumans, aliens, or science experiments. I don't think the Maximoffs' powers are something that can be created by science. 3) This is more than likely not Civil War-compliant.

Okay! With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy the story :)

Disclaimer - I own nothing

To Need Someone

The six of them are gathered in the woods. Snow twinkles lightly from the clouds above, between the empty branches and through the spaces in the trees. The sun has set and the Avengers are shrouded in darkness, wandering aimlessly in the night. Wanda is reminded of a similar location at a similar time, when they had once been enemies.

When they had once been together.

"Split up." It's an order, whispered by Steve, whose voice is harsh in the silence.

Something twinges in Wanda's mental periphery and she throws up a hand to signal to the others to wait. Her arm hits the Captain's chest, but she doesn't notice. She focuses completely on the spot she'd felt the light. Her eyes glow ominously. "Someone is here." She pauses – tilts her head. The twinge sharpens, slicing in and out of existence somewhere to her right. She can feel the emotions and the intentions, but the mind feels… bizarre. Almost… tampered with. "She is waiting for us."

Sam tries to whisper, but his voice carries. "Who's 'she'?"

The twinge becomes bright and sharp and painful. Wanda whirls around, fingers aglow with scarlet magic, and blasts a shadowy figure into a nearby tree. The magic briefly lights up the darkness, but once it disappears, it is pitch black once more.

"Light!" Steve barks, loud and clear with no room for argument.

Several lights appear at once. Vision's gem glows brightly, its yellow hue dawning on the snowy ground. Natasha's suit flickers to life in stripes of neon blue, her electrifying batons sizzling. Sam's and Rhodey's shoulder lights pop open and blast rays of white light, momentarily blinding the others. Wanda's tendrils of magic creep around the seven of them, visible in the darkness but not allowing anything else to be.

Another twinge and the woman, the shadow, charges at Wanda from behind and tackles her. There are arms around Wanda's torso and the ground is ripped out from under her feet. The snow is not soft as it collides with her head and elbow. The arms are gone before Wanda can retaliate. She finds that she has lost a single breath and must catch up before she can move. She blinks the blurs away as best she can and spots the woman sprint out into the forest, Steve and Sam in hot pursuit.

Vision kneels by Wanda to see if she's alright, but she shrugs him off. She feels cold. She feels so much like the ice beneath her knees that she might as well have frozen to the ground.

That woman is enhanced and she is fast - like Pietro. Her mind was abuzz with orders and missions and targets. She was leading the others into a trap.

"Stop them!" Wanda cries, voice hoarse and throat tight for reasons she has yet to understand. She clutches at snow and it feels soft now, even with the stinging in her palms and the ice in her knuckles.

Vision reads her mind and blasts off into the distance, a shockwave left in his wake that blows her hair out of her face. Natasha pulls her to her feet and they all chase after their teammates - their friends. The run is futile, but it feels productive and that is always something Wanda has needed.

She thinks of Steve and of all the good he's done and all the effort he's put into making her feel safe and comfortable. She thinks of Sam and his jokes and his therapy sessions and the way he knows when she doesn't want to be touched. She can't lose them. Not now. Not ever.

Steve and Sam and the woman are gone. They've disappeared. Wanda can't find their minds anywhere. She searches and searches and stands like a statue in the snow for what feels like hours. Her fingers and limbs are stiff as crimson waves dance throughout the forest, weaving around trees and bushes and plants, but never people. This forest is as devoid of human life as she feels.

They're gone.

They need Pietro. Steve and Sam have been gone for days and no one knows what to do. Natasha has taken Steve's place as leader, but it's clear that she prefers to be behind the curtain than on the stage. She's good at it, certainly, but she dislikes it. The others are similarly distraught.

Wanda is lost. First their parents. Then Pietro. Now her teammates. When will she stop losing people? When will she be truly alone?

Against Wanda's better judgement, they call in Stark, who's busy as hell running a company with his fiancée, but would be pissed as hell if nobody told him that Steve and Sam were missing.

Even with his brain and his help, the tension between him and Wanda is palpable. The awkwardness between him and Vision is thick enough to confuse with humidity in the dead of winter. The avoidance of Natasha is an old wound that's scabbed over, but still there, still a scar. Tony doesn't belong on a team - not this one. He and James are huddled together whenever Wanda sees him, which isn't often. They're always in the lab working on locating shields and wings.

Stark never comes up for food or water. He has to be prompted vehemently by James or he might not survive. Wanda is torn between admiration and disgust. His determination is outstanding, but sometimes she wishes James would forget to feed him and let him die. She had not forgotten lying in their house waiting to die.

Still, they can't find Steve or Sam.

Four days pass before Wanda breaks. She stands outside in the brisk tundra and feels the wind bite the skin of her legs as her nightgown flaps against her thighs. Her eyes are red and they glow. She stands, barefoot, in the snow, arms outstretched and hair swirling around her.

They need Pietro. He's fast. He can catch the woman – the enhanced. He's the only one who can. They need him for this. It's the only way. She must do this.

Blood red magic threads itself into the ground, through the dirt, though the coffin. She holds her every muscle stiff and tense and taut, focused completely on her work - on her brother.

They need him.

She searches and searches and the Battle comes back to her in flashes. No life. No warmth. No Pietro.

She presses harder, fingers and hands shaking with effort, the rest of her shaking with cold. Her magic dances over every inch of his skin, analyzing, waiting, and then she dives deeper, inside, where it should be warm and beating but isn't-

She wraps a hand, red and raw, around his heart and she squeezes gently.

A beat.

Again.

Two beats.

She repeats the process like a pattern, slow and steady and yet impatient.

They need him.

She doesn't know how long she stands there, but it's long enough that she feels completely frozen, unable to move; maybe it's because she doesn't want to, not until he moves too.

She forces his heart to beat in time with hers - like it used to. She remembers her hand on his chest, feeling a beat beneath her palm that was always so steady. No matter how fast he ran or how excited he was, he was always steady, always warm. He was her rock. He was the crutch she used to walk every day - to live. But without him, she had fallen and she doesn't know how to get back up on her own.

She moved- no, she is moved by something and it jerks her awake, into consciousness. She'd fallen into her own trance, enchanted by his heartbeat. She heard it. She felt it. She made it happen

"PIETRO!" She screams, her weak knees brittle enough that they break under her weight and she falls. Metal arms covered in thin material encircle her, softening her fall. It's not Pietro. He's still down there. She has to get him out. He's alive. His heart was beating.

Pietro.

She wakes up in a bed. It's hers. It's her room at the Avengers facility. It's her bed and hers alone and she doesn't have to share it but now she does because Pietro's-

He's not alive. She had forced his corpse to twitch in simulation of life all night long. That was all it had been.

Hot tears stream down her face because she'd been so convinced that he was back - that she was powerful enough to resurrect the dead. If she really possessed that kind of power, Ultron would have been stopped earlier. Pietro would be alive. And Steve and Sam would still be here.

Her tears burn as they slide down her cheeks and she scrubs at them furiously. It itches against her skin. No matter how many times she cries, it always itches.

Pietro isn't coming back. Maybe she'll die of frost bite and she can be with him again. She lies under the covers and cries as silently as she did when the two of them lay in the remains of their house, Stark's name branded in her mind.

She doesn't die and she sniffles and wonders how she got here. She remembers hard arms, too solid to be human but too warm to be robot. She is still cold, frozen on the inside, but she is not dying.

She pads barefoot into the kitchen and finds Vision reading a book. The sun is setting through the windows. She must have missed a whole day. A day of searching. Of waiting. Of nothing. She doesn't care, but her stomach does and it rumbles annoyingly.

Vision looks up. She ignores him. She wants to thank him - for saving her - because she knows it was the right thing to do, but she didn't want it. She wishes he'd let her freeze.

She grabs an apple and sulks back to her room, where she stares at the fruit and tries not to cry, but can't.

She tries a different tactic. She used to be able to feel him in the back of her mind, laughing or thinking or musing. He always had the most random thoughts. They only had their powers for a few months, but she misses having him inside her head. It feels empty and alone without him. She wants to hear his running commentary on the organization of her mind. She wants to hear his hilarious comments on the people around them. She even wants to hear his crude imaginings of the women they pass in the street if it means he's still there - alive and real.

She digs her nails into the mattress and wades through an ocean of her own thoughts. Before his death, her mind had been a library of neatly organized shelves. Now it is chaos and confusion and clutter. She searches for him. A remnant of him. His voice. Something. Anything.

The memories are easiest to find, but the hardest to sifle through. She skips them, doesn't let herself fall even deeper into her own head. She'll sink into delusion if she touches one of those memories. She'll lose everything she has now if she goes back and refuses to come out. She knows that much.

She finds echoes of his past thoughts. She feels his hesitation and apprehension when they meet Ultron. She feels his protectiveness surge when Vision's dream flashes before her eyes. She feels his pain as the bullets tear through him and rip his insides apart.

She can't-

She can't think about that. She'll break.

She sets aside the memories and the shells he's left behind and she collapses on the floor, despising the bed with a passion. Pietro is sleeping in a box, so why should she get a mattress?

Steve and Sam return, somewhat unharmed, with a man with a metal arm who answers to Barnes and it's not fair. Steve gets his brother back. It's not fair. Steve waited for over 70 years (3 if you don't count his time in the ice). Maybe in 3 years, Pietro will come back on his own. She'll take him, however he is. Zombie or vampire or brainwashed assassin, she'll take him.

She's ecstatic that Steve and Sam are alive and safe and she's happy for Steve and Barnes, but she misses Pietro and she doesn't think she can go on.

It's Vision who comes to her one night when she's having a nightmare and wakes her. She cries in his arms, glad her tears won't affect his circuitry. He uses the stone to promise her a dreamless sleep.

It helps. She feels better in the morning and more awake than she has in weeks. She eats a whole plate of eggs (courtesy of Sam) and she manages to greet Barnes. She even earns a grunt in return.

Steve tells the story that morning, when he thinks Barnes is ready to hear it.

Wanda isn't - not for the heart wrenching tale that he tells. He speaks of a woman who can slow down time. An enhanced who can move inhumanly fast. She works for Hydra, but she's been brainwashed – made to obey. In her haste, she speeds up time just as Steve and Sam grab her - they all move days ahead until she drops them in the snow.

Sam grabs her again and they demand answers. They threaten never to let go.

The enhanced, Alice, cries tears of ice and she breaks. She is with Hydra and she must comply. Steve and Sam want to bring her here, but she refuses - she won't let them. Instead, they take refuge in a house and live there for days, helping her remember. It's a grueling process, but it works and what's more…

She knows where Bucky is.

From there, they search and they search and they find him and they bring him back, but Alice doesn't want to come. She's heard whispers of people like her being abducted and she wants to go into hiding. She runs before they can protest but after she kisses them both on the cheek in gratitude.

Steve and Bucky and Sam fight and fight and fight until Bucky gives in to two against one and comes home.

Wanda has to leave at this point. Steve has gotten his brother back. He's searched and searched and fought and been stabbed and shot by this man and still Steve found him. They're together.

Wanda wants that more than anything. She's willing to go through everything Steve did and more to get Pietro back. But she can't. Because no one has the power to bring back the dead.

That night, she tells him she's happy for him – she really is. He has his brother back and she can't imagine how he feels, but she tries anyway. Every single day, she tries. Her congratulations turn into choked sobs and she sits there, burying her face in her hands. She can't remember a time when she wasn't on the verge of tears and she feels weak for it. She feels broken and useless and dangerous and she decides that she hates crying.

Steve scoots closer to her on the couch, barely inches away. She can sense his hesitation, but she can also sense his intentions and she lets him continue. She feels his hand gently rest on the back of her head. He guides it slowly to the crook in his neck, where she falls into his embrace and cries. She wraps her fingers around his wrist as his other arm encircles her shoulders, holding her firmly.

He tells her that he's never had a twin, but Barnes is his brother in every sense of the word but one and that he thinks he knows a sliver of how she feels. She knows. She's seen his grief and anguish and thinks that if anyone on the team could understand her pain, it's Steve.

Barnes is highly unresponsive and is either in his room or glued to Steve's side. He's unkempt and dishevelled and he glares at everyone, especially Steve. His mind is like a twisted tangle of melted metal fused together in pieces that belong and most that don't. Each piece is a confusing shade of grey.

Wanda sneaks into his room one night. She failed to resurrect Pietro, but maybe she can resurrect Bucky. She curls her fingers into the air, scraping the air with her nails and leaving behind trails of magic that wave like ribbons. She flicks them into Barnes' head, weaving through that giant mess of a mind.

He jumps to his feet and she gasps, flings him to the other side of the room. He crashes into the nightstand and knocks it over. The lamp falls and shatters. Hurried footsteps pound down the hall and Wanda locks the door with her magic. She needs to do this – she needs to try.

She digs deeper into his mind, wading through the muck of memories and thoughts. It's a process that is delicate and long and she takes her time, prying the pieces apart.

The door explodes from its hinges and nearly hits her, but with a flick of her hand, she sends it careening into the wall behind her. The Avengers spill into the room and throw out a hand toward them, freezing them all. Their minds are bright and awake and colourful and screaming at her to stop, but she ignores them. She must do this – for Steve.

It takes a while, but eventually she's able to distinguish every single piece. She doesn't know their order and she doesn't know what's real or what's fake, but now they're all laid out for him to sort himself. She drops him to sleep and he collapses on the floor, silent but alive.

Her magic blinks away and the wood hits her knees.

They thank her for it later, when Bucky wakes up calm and aware and just as quiet and solitary, but more relaxed and content. Steve bring her into a bone-crushing hug, tears escaping from his own eyes and she pats his back awkwardly. Bucky still has a long way to go, but she has eased the process immensely.

She thinks vaguely that she feels happy to have helped, but furious with herself that she couldn't do the same for Pietro.

One drunk, hysterical phone call to Dr. Cho later, Wanda sinks deeper than rock bottom. She stumbles around the facility, searching for her room, but crashes into Vision's arms, sobbing like the child she still is. She doesn't know how she got here or how he got here, but they're both here and she's done with life.

She wants the cradle. She wants to put Pietro in the cradle and watch his chest move as she beats his heart for him. She knows it will work. It has to.

She needs him.

Vision strokes her hair and tries to get her to sleep. His mind is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. She kisses him fiercely, drunk and in love and in mourning. The kiss is cold as stone. She pushes harder, trying to remember, trying to forget.

Vision pushes the hardest, but not with his lips and she can't reach him anymore. A blue streak rushes past her and she chokes on his name as she falls.

He catches her.

It's Vision who suggests it the next morning. A getaway. A vacation. A retreat.

Wanda doesn't want to relax. To relax is to be content and to be content is to be okay. She is not okay.

She has to train. She has to be here. She has to be with her brother, buried just outside. But she doesn't want to see Vision, not after what she did last night. She can't look at Bucky without thinking of Pietro and she wishes she could look at Steve without jealousy flooding through her. She's never seen him this happy.

She takes up Clint's offer to stay with his family and promises not to endanger them. Laura laughs and believes her.

Clint's farm is noisy on the inside with three kids running around, but outside is quiet and peaceful even if it smells like manure. There's hardly any snow here, but it's still cold and the animals need tending to.

Laura teaches her how to care for the cows and the pigs and the horses. Wanda loves the horses. They are majestic and beautiful and fast and Laura promises to teach her to ride.

Clint lets her drive the tractor and asks for her help to paint the nursery and build furniture. He keeps her busy and she appreciates it. They talk sometimes, but mostly it's grunts and requests. He breaches the subject eventually, telling her over and over that it's not her fault – that there's nothing she could have done. Her reply is cold that is bone deep and she storms away like thunder clouds rolling to its next location.

They haven't spoken about it since.

Cooper and Lila demand attention whenever they come home from school. They learn to stop asking her for help with homework because most of it she doesn't know, but then they ask her to learn with them so that it won't be so bad and really she can't refuse such adorable faces.

She learns and she builds and she rides horses and she even gets to hold Nathaniel. It's the family she and Pietro were ripped away from. It's the one they've been craving ever since that missile landed in their house.

She knows he'd love it here. He'd tease Clint to no end and he would take the kids on speedy piggy back rides and Wanda can see it so clearly that it hurts.

But not as much as she thought it would.

Laura does teach her how to ride and Wanda can't get enough of it. Every time she sits on the back of her horse Magda (named after her mother), Wanda feels free. She's flown before, but this is somehow better. When she's riding with Magda, Wanda is thoughtless, weightless, and guiltless. All of her sadness spills from her lips in a laugh that feels like opening the doors of a cage and finally stepping through.

When she hops off the mare, she feels lighter and airier and happier.

She watches Cooper and Lila play together and chase each other and fight until they're both out of breath. Sometimes it feels as though her heart is shrinking and other times it feels as though it's growing.

She misses Pietro, but she watches Lila act independently and do things on her own and Wanda remembers.

She remembers a time when they weren't co-dependent. She remembers a time when she begged her parents to give her her own room. She remembers a time when Pietro used to run from her yelling that girls had cooties.

Wanda used to be her own person. Maybe it was time she was herself again, instead of one half of a whole.

It's been a few months since the Battle when Vision comes to visit. She returns from a frolic with Magda and finds him smiling awkwardly at Cooper and Lila as they tug on his cape and ask him a million questions simultaneously. To Wanda's amusement, he attempts to answer them all. Simultaneously.

He senses her presence and looks up.

"You're smiling," he says. It's the first time she's heard his voice in a long time and she longs to hear it again.

She becomes aware that her lips are pulled up at the corners and her gaze feels soft and loving. "I guess I am."

Clint and Laura "subtly" lead their children back into the house so that Wanda can show the android the horses in private. She introduces Vision to Magda and he is naturally, adorably curious. He strokes her mane, just like he once stroked Wanda's as she lay in his arms.

She apologizes for the kiss, staring down at her feet. He tells her not to be sorry and that he would have enjoyed it more had he not tasted tears.

She steps closer, making her intentions as clear as she can without saying a word. He leans closer. She brushes her lips against his and it's weird and warm and he tastes like metal. But he's soft and malleable and he reciprocates immediately, learning from her every move. It's nice and beautiful and she pulls back. She looks him in the eye, and tells him that she's not ready for this.

"What?" He asks, blinking. Everything about today is unusual for him, it seems.

"Us," she clarifies. "Kissing. Being together."

"Ah. You mean to say a romantic relationship." He doesn't sound disappointed. She doesn't know what to make of that.

"Yes. I enjoyed our kiss very much, but I don't think I want another one - not for a while. It just doesn't seem right."

He nods. "I understand. You are still in mourning. I'm not sure I am ready for a romantic relationship myself. I have a lot of research to do on the subject."

She laughs. "Of course you do. But know that the best research will come from experience."

He smiles, something Ultron never did. "Well until then, I shall prepare myself all I can."

She can't help smiling, grinning, beaming at him, elated that he is okay with waiting - with remaining friends for the time being.

Clint calls for them, proclaiming that it is time for dinner. Wanda walks slightly ahead of Vision to hide her smile that just won't seem to go away. She bites her lip as she enters the doorway and swears she sees Clint give Vision the side-eye.

She feels different now. Not new. She's still Wanda, still a twin. But she feels... fresher. More mature. She feels older - like she's become a big sister now. Maybe that's due to Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel. Maybe it's because it's been more than 12 minutes since he's been dead and that technically makes her older. She doesn't know. But she feels different. More whole than she has in a while. Not completely, but almost.

She still wants him, but she doesn't need him.

She still misses him, but she doesn't need him.

She still loves him, but she doesn't him.

All she needs is herself.