She screamed a guttural sound which held more pain than what should have been humanly possible. Her knees buckled under the weight that suddenly came crashing down. Her knees scraping against the pavement and sand.
Her brother.
She felt it. Or rather felt its absence, his absence.
There was no doubt about it. Her brother was gone. She could no longer sense his lifeforce, only a cold corpse, a shell. Their link was severed, cut clean leaving her to feel the hollowness and pure anguish.
She could feel her power radiating from her in waves. But on the inside, her powers tore her apart to pieces.
Her emotions were empowering her magic even more, but she now cared little about protecting the key. The fate of Sokovia paled in comparison to her brother.
She did not care as the Ultron sentries were obliterated around her, raining down scraps of metal. Those were mere replicas of Ultron. She wanted to find Ultron, she needed to find Ultron.
It took little effort.
Her powers drew her towards him. A magnet that echoed death and vengeance. Her rage and fury were the only things that pushed her on because if she was honest, she barely had the will to live.
And there he was, nothing more than a heap of metal that had once been strong enough to rival the Avengers. He laid crumpled in the wreckage of a train. His body relying on the train walls to keep him upright. And when she saw him, she could feel the darkness calling to her. Gone was the little girl who had cried under the bed as she watched parents died. In her place was something much more terrifying. A monster, a witch.
She saw her reflection in the shattered glass as she walked toward Ultron. Her eyes were a vibrant shade of scarlet, contrasting to her ever pale skin that was covered in dirt. She didn't recognize the demon looking back at her.
"Wanda," the android said. If one listened closely, the could hear the trace of regret in the android's robotic voice. "If you stay here you will die." And the concern was there too.
But she heard none of it. She was not here to keep him company as everything went to hell. No, she was here for one thing.
"I just did. Do you know how it felt?" she asked, kneeling down to look into the android's lifeless synthetic eyes.
It felt like a thousand knives piercing her. It felt like entering a void that siphoned her very soul. It felt like losing everything. But words could not describe how it felt the moment her brother died. Words could not bring Ultron the same pain she felt.
Her magic was already circling her fingers, flowing around them waiting to be called upon.
The city was crumbling around them, but none of it mattered. And Ultron was right. If she stayed, she would die, but she didn't really care. She would meet death with open arms. She would see her brother again, and that gave her the tiniest bit of hope.
Anticipation. That was what she felt.
Her hand snapped open. The android closed its eyes in pain as its chest began to rumble. Slowly the metal exterior peeled apart as it glowed red with her magic and his synthetic heart flew into her hand.
"It felt like that."
He was dead. Pietro had been avenged and yet Wanda could not get rid of the bitterness. Killing Ultron didn't stop her from feeling like a part of her was gone forever.
But it sure as hell felt satisfying.
The dust settled eventually. Sokovia was like a puzzle with missing and broken pieces. Buildings were collapsed, and rubble was everywhere. It would be a long time before the country would recover, if it ever would.
The citizens they could save were safe, but the Avengers were not gods, or at least not all of them. There was no way they could save every scared and lost child or brave soul who had given their life to save another. There would always be those who were trapped too far down for anyone to hear their pleas for help, those whose body was damaged and had given up before help could come.
Death was inevitable.
By the time neighbouring regions and cleanup crews were sent to help, so many were already lost.
As for the Avengers, they were already on a Quinjet deployed from the Helicarrier. They had decided it would be best to stay out of the public eye and they themselves had injuries and losses to deal with.
They were two members down.
Doctor Banner had taken an unexpected leave, and who could ignore the lifeless body of a teenage boy in the bay of the aircraft. Or the teenage girl that sat numbly, almost as lifeless as the corpse she held in her arms.
She was alive, but she should not have been.
When Sokovia fell from the sky, she fell with it. Gravity dragged the land down faster than it pulled her, and for a moment she was suspended in the train, beside the very thing that had killed her brother. It felt free.
She wasn't trapped really. She could have pried the metal train apart and from there she could work out a solution. Cry for help, telepathically create a landing, but she didn't want to. Her brother was gone, the last of her family leaving her alone in the world. What purpose was there for her to stay? She had lived a good life. So she waited, to join her brother and her parents. Life seemed almost peaceful once you accepted death.
How ironic.
But it seemed she would not die today. The very android she killed had built the very android that saved her.
Even more irony for her.
Vision had saved her, carried her away when her limbs were too weak to move. She had slumped in his arms, her eyelids heavy. The only thing that showed she was still alive was the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
When they had landed, she had screamed for her brother. The crowds parted for her as she ran, even they could hear the despair.
The rage now faded, a thing of the past she could barely remember. Once again sorrow and pain was there to greet her as she saw her brother's corpse.
Her brother was not ready to die. He should not have died. His face was pained and scared, like he had seen death and was left speechless and frozen.
She could tell that someone had closed his eyes and she was thankful for that. But to see her brother's body riddled with bullets and soaked in blood. She felt like she was the one who had been shot. She felt dead and yet she wasn't.
She wished she was. It would be easier that way.
"Who ever said life would be easy?" She could almost hear her brother saying. "But we have each other."
That was what he had said after they had lost their parents. As they were waiting for the bomb in front of them to explode, as they waited for death. Still, through the tears, she had smiled. Now she couldn't remember how it felt to smile.
She hugged his body, but his arms did not hug her back. They laid unmoving by his side. She was getting his blood all over herself, but she didn't care. A part of her wanted him to open his eyes and laugh at her, tease her about worrying about nothing.
"You can't get rid of me that easily," he would say, as he would stand up spinning a circle to show her he was alright. Her brother would have laughed, "I did not know you cared so much about me, sister."
That was what she wanted, what she wished for. But life didn't always give you what you wanted. There was no denying that he was dead no matter how much she begged or fantasized otherwise.
Their link was gone. She would have given anything to change that. An arm, a leg, her life.
It was worse than losing any one thing because Pietro was everything. He was there from the day she was born, a pity he would not be there until the day she died.
"Hey kid," a voice said hesitantly. No one had bothered her since she sat down by her brother. No one had dared. Approach an emotionally unstable telekinetic enhanced individual? Well, enough people had died today.
Slowly, she lowered her brother onto the floor, resting his body in a peaceful position as best as she could. Her hands trembled the entire time.
She turned to face Clint Barton who stood behind her.
"I... Your brother, he died saving me. I thought I was dead but your brother moved a car, shielding me and a little boy from the bullets. I just wanted you to know that I'm sorry."
Her mouth was dry and paralyzed, like a fish out of water. She only nodded mutely.
"If you need anything, just tell us. Anything at all. We are here for you."
Again, words were beyond her reach. She nodded a second time, and he left.
She turned back to her brother.
Inhale, then exhale. Breathing was supposed to be easy, it was supposed to come naturally, but she was struggling for air. She felt the weight of what was to come crushing her chest.
She was drowning.
"It's time."
She nodded.
Her brother's funeral was a small and solemn affair. She would have prefered to have been by herself at the funeral, that was how it had always been, the two of them against the rest of the world. But the other Avengers had insisted on coming because "he was one of their own".
Aside from the Avengers, there was no one else that attended Pietro's funeral.
They were orphaned at ten and lived nearly their whole life bouncing around from one foster family to another. Their friendships lasted only months, a year being the longest. It didn't matter because they were always there for each other.
Wanda held the jar that carried his ashes and turned to the other Avengers.
She had not known what to say. How could she explain the love between two siblings who had nothing but each other? Then Steve had told the best speeches came from the heart.
"My brother was a good person, but he was given a hard life. When our parents died, he stayed strong for me, shielding me from the world. He smiled even though it hurt, so that I would smile too. He told me everything would be alright even if he wasn't certain they would be. He held the world up for me when it fell down." She paused, gasping for air. Her vision was beginning to blur. "Even before we had powers, my brother loved to run. He always told me that he loved how free he felt when he ran. He felt like the wind. Limitless. I never understood his love for running, but I always thought it suited him and his free spirit. To bury him, would be to imprison him in the ground. I don't think he would enjoy it. So it would only make sense to scatter his ashes in the wind, so that he can be free again."
She took a breath. Her eyes were glassy, but she didn't cry.
"My brother and I had very little growing up. We scavenged and stole when we could, but we had each other. It was enough. Even when we had nothing, we had everything."
The funeral proceeded as she scattered his ashes off the cliff. Pietro would have loved the view. He would have finished climbing all the mountains in view and would have told her of the breathtaking sights that she was missing out on.
When the day was over, she found herself alone in her bedroom. She twisted the lock in place and slid down against the door.
She let out the tears she had been holding in the entire time. And for the first time since her parent's death, she cried.
After watching the Avenger movies, I had to pay homage to Pietro's death.