Summary:
Before the Avengers, before the Brotherhood, after the traumatic death of their family and separation from the life they had known, Wanda and Pietro traveled the old country for years, living off of the land.
Disclaimer:
Follows a work of fanfiction intended for entertainment purposes only, the creation and publication of which earns its author no monetary profit. All recognizable characters and referenced canonical events are property of Marvel Comics Incorporated. Or Disney, whatever. Or Fox. I absolutely cannot keep track.
A TALE OF SURVIVING
It seemed to be a particularly cold night. Underfoot, the ground frozen hard as cement, and with each breath, the sensation of a pinecone sprouting inside both lungs. Particularly cold nights seemed to travel in packs, like hungry wolves scavenging around the edge of camp, night after night. There was a saying among her people, how the wolves kept away the bears… something about the familiar enemy you live with in balance versus the unknown enemy who eats friend and foe alike. She could remember fewer and fewer of those old parables, year after year.
How many winters had it been, since…?
She could never remember. She tried not to.
"I'm tired."
Her brother nodded over his shoulder, his breath lingering like a ghost in the air. "Almost finished." He was building the fire back up after their evening meal of roast rabbit and unidentified root vegetable. The fire would only last an hour or two untended, but he always slept light and would get up to revive it throughout the night. In cold like this, she would wake as well, shivering in his absence, and when he returned, say, 'Thank you. Thank you,' and thanks to him would not freeze to death or starve, for one more night.
He joined her within the shelter they had built out of pine branches and bark. It braced against a moss-covered boulder that broke the worst of the wind, and surrounded by high trees, did not endure much snow. Compared to some others they had made do with over the years, it was a luxury accommodation.
"We will visit the farther village tomorrow. That woman we met there, the Widow Ava, she may take work from me again for more repairs." And if so, they would stow away to sleep in her barn overnight, like last year, he had no need to say.
"All right. Thank you."
Propriety being a death sentence in harsh weather, they settled down together under a heavy hide -she curled almost in half, he enveloping her from behind- and fell asleep.
Sometime between then and when he would next rise to nurture the fire, she awoke to a strange sensation. There pressing against her from behind, something rigid and hard. As she stirred so did he.
"What is that?"
"Nothing. Go back to sleep."
Just waking, she mistook the dismissal as jest. Had he brought the skewer from their roasted rabbit to bed? "Really, what is it?" She reached behind to feel.
"Stop." His tone stern, as it rarely was towards her, "Wanda, you know better." Having grasped her wrist firmer than he needed to, he folded her arm back across her own center and held it there.
She did know better. No Touching – especially not below the waist. She was not even supposed to walk crosswise in front of him. He was not even supposed to come into contact with the fabric of her skirt. And they were never ever supposed to see each other in a state of undress, which happened sometimes too. These were all cultural indoctrinations that they could not quite remember the meaning of, but such things ingrained upon young minds. Because they were of age, that was part of it. And because they were unwed boy and girl, that has something to do with it too.
More man and woman than boy and girl now, although. "Oh." Suddenly she realized.
He acknowledged her revelation by repeating much softer than before, "Go back to sleep."
"Mother told me it happens when men are…" her cheeks smoldered like coals to think it, to say it, "excited about a woman."
"It happens during sleep, as well. It has no meaning, and cannot be helped." He shifted to establish proper distance between them. "Now never mind, and go back to sleep."
"Oh no, Pietro please, it is so cold. Please?"
He hesitated, but relented, whispering with no small amount of guilt, "I'm sorry," as he returned to fill up the empty space against her again, as much as physically possible – or as little. That summer, he had finally surpassed her in stature, and though his voice changed seemingly overnight, puberty left the rest of him twice length than girth before abandoning his sporadic growth process until whenever next.
Wanda suffered the opposite but equally ill-timed effects; all manner of voluminous curves stacked awkwardly onto her comparatively miniature frame. She had not met a man who seemed to mind, or failed to notice. In the closer village, the reason they had to stay well away now and could never go back, a group of young men had taken particularly fervent interest.
Her brother had gone to the smithy to barter repair of a sad old skinning knife; his usual façade to feel out any possible connections for work. Tradesmen and farmers tended towards intermittent sympathy for the plight of their people – this mercy usually in correlation with their seasonal need for temporary and cheap labor.
Wanda waited in the center of town, where wives shopping for their groceries and wares might suffer a stroke of pity seeing her there alone and flip a coin towards the poor gypsy orphan. Sometimes she made connections on her own this way. Where she lacked her brother's guile sprung a fountain of friendliness that too could be well rewarded – or utterly misreceived.
Having transfixed upon her that day like a flock of crows, and not at all dissuaded by her polite rebuttals, half a dozen little delinquents eventually coerced her away behind the church, of all places. By the time her alarm had escalated to the point of calling out for help, they were far enough removed from clear sight and hearing of the crowd for the melee to be mistaken as children roughhousing in play.
When her brother returned from the blacksmith's shop, she was already gone and forgotten by any onlooker in the square. When her brother located her assailants under the shadow of God's own house, she was already pinned to the ground half clothed.
Eyes cinched shut in terror and shame, she remembers only what seemed like out of nowhere a storm appearing overhead, furious wind and ruckus and electricity in the air. Almost at once, the hands holding down her mouth and ankles and wrists disappeared, and then able to turn over she did so, crawling to her feet and running running running, some mad creature uncaged.
Once deep in the woods she slowed to a stagger, near exhaustion from the flight and freight of it all, when suddenly her cloak that had been stripped off and laid out as the bedding of her pending despoilment came down around her shoulders from behind, the way one seizes a feral cat to keep from injury. Her breathless scream made no sound, breaking into sobs as noiseless. "Shh, shh, Wanda, shh – you are safe, I am here now, no one can harm you – shh, shh, breathe, Wanda – breathe."
Dizzy and dazed, he held her for however long, whispering comforts in Romani until her frantic gasps subsided. Still shaking, she let him separate them by arm's length – by then he trusted her wits had returned enough to release her hands. Those dangerous, deadly hands that the boys had seized foremost, rendering her powerless. She pulled up her blouse from where it had been torn down to hang over the belt of her skirts, as her brother secured her cloak.
"We have to go. They may come looking. This is too close." Along with her clothes, her brother had collected and returned her satchel, and a necklace she had not realized went missing. When he placed the strap over her head, she saw his hands stained blood red. Raw panic struck her anew like a horse's kick to the stomach.
"Oh God, oh no, did they- my legs are numb, how they held me down, I can't feel- did they- oh god, is that my blood?"
"No, no, shh, calm down – breathe, Wanda, shh." As a precaution he held her hands again, his crimson fingers like a scarlet letter curled around her palms.
Overwhelmed, she crumbled forward, day washed away by unnatural darkness. When she revived, true night had fallen, their humble camp aglow in firelight. He must have carried her back – she had vague recollection of being tucked away to rest. Seeing her awoken, her brother came to secure both hands around a mug of hot soup. "Please eat."
She obeyed, ravenously. All the while, he stared into the fire he prodded, the awkward angles of his juvenile face like a statue against its light, hard and lifeless. "It was their blood," she said, meaning the boys who accosted her.
"Yes."
"Did you kill them?"
"No, bless their mothers – but if not that their vile little worms were still in their pants when I found you, for that is how I knew-" he seemed to settle himself, wincing. "Forgive me."
"You saved me."
"I doomed you," his voice broke, and he swallowed. "I left you there alone, a flower in a hornets nest."
A flower in a world filled with flowers, and rain and sun and all things that flowers love and need to survive. Softly she said, "Would you keep me sealed inside of a jar?"
She could see the sharp line of his jaw bulge as he clenched his teeth. "I will keep you safe. I swear it." With other words, it would have sounded like a threat.
They spoke little more of the incident, but agreed they must never go back to that place.
The blasted cold unrelenting, they headed out the next day for the further village. Before his untimely death, the Widow Ava's husband had owned the local general store, and although her father officially inherited the family business, she kept a presence in its daily operations. The prior year, Wanda had struck up a kindly conversation, her curiosity piqued seeing an obviously well to do woman tending her own herb garden under the storefront window.
In the course of their talk, the widow expressed her concern for Wanda traveling alone, doubly relieved to learn she had a brother who had gone off to barter work for repairs. "Well you are such a fine little lady, I'm sure your brother has a strong back. If he is good with animals as well as with his hands, I have some jobs at my estate that need doing." As Wanda beamed, so did the widow smile. "I cannot pay much in coin alone, but will see you fed. Now go find him and return straightaway – my father insists on locking shop an hour before dark. Come with us back to the homestead and stay overnight. No one here will put you up until they follow in the good Widow Ava's example." She rolled her eyes when repeating what had evidently become her title by the townsfolk.
So it had gone, and so they found her again as before. In front of the shop, her herb garden barren now, but still sturdy after Pietro had better reinforced it. Behind the counter, an older man coached a wiry youth in the proper method of sweeping a floor, and upon a ladder stocking shelves, the good Widow Ava.
Recognizing the pair at once, she descended to greet them kindly. They caught up in brief – her father though elderly still lived but had taken ill, and her most experienced farmhand was not much younger, but did his best to keep up with the land and staff.
They struck the same deal as before; little coin but board, in exchange for repairs and some attention to the animals.
As they rode on horse drawn wagon back to her homestead, the widow explained, "My father remains the proprietor of my affairs, so long as he lives. Everything I have now and that will be left to me, I owe to him. He is a good man. But… he has not changed."
"We understand." The senior had made it clear upon their first meeting that he did not think highly of their kind. He had no qualms with hired help – but the help was not welcome at his table, nor even in his home.
"You remember old Boris; well, he is not getting any younger either. His arthritis swells in the winter especially; we have him set up now in the main house where it's warmer. We would get no work out of him, otherwise. So the loft in the barn is vacant save for storage, and it has a small wood stove. You can stay there overnight."
She stopped the wagon before the main house to let them off at the barn, handing down a sack she had brought from the shop. "Take this to tide yourselves over, it isn't much. Tomorrow I will arrange a proper meal brought out after work. And remember Pietro, I need you at first light to come help unload this wagon. Good night."
They feasted that night on bread and cured meats and dried fruit. Not much to the privileged, perhaps, but it was the best meal they had since the last autumn squash. That night upon a bed of hay and wool before a wood stove, they spread out gratefully. Oh, to feel full, to be warm and dry! Wanda reveled silently in these small comforts, knowing her brother's feelings of guilt that he could not provide them for her at all times.
"I like her."
"I know."
"She is lonely, you can tell."
A pause so unlike her brother, "Yes."
"Perhaps she will let us stay."
"For a while, perhaps." He changed position, too used to sleeping on his side. "But soon it will be time for us to move on."
Wanda rested her head on his outstretched forearm, and dozed off watching him pretend to sleep. During the night, she found her way back into the crescent of his body cupping hers in full, and both slept soundly.
True to the Widow's word, the next evening old Boris arrived with a pot of hot stew, and replenishment of non-spoilables. After a long day's labor -Wanda caring for the animals, and Pietro mending a fence- it tasted doubly good. Her brother ate quietly, and then perched on a bale of straw, watched the sunset through the rose window. She filled the silence for them both, telling him about her triumphs and trials of the day – until finally he stood.
"What is wrong?"
"Nothing. I must go to the house. The Widow bade me return after supper."
"What for?"
"To fix something."
He added some wood to the stove and kissed her temple before leaving.
She waited by the window where he had last sat, watching the distant house now a murky shape in the deepening gloom, save for a lamp on in the foyer, and another one in a bedroom upstairs. Nothing changed for she knew not how long. Eventually her brother emerged through the front door, and the bedroom light went out.
Wordlessly he arrived minutes later, settling down in front of the stove, and fed it little sticks that he broke apart one at a time between warming his hands.
Wanda joined beside him, not too close.
"I worried the old father had found you in there."
"No. He is asleep."
"Well. It took such a while."
"Yes." Seeing she expected more, "I have never… fixed something like that before."
"What was it?"
"…a clock."
"Oh."
She brought up her own knees to hug, staring into the licking flames. "Is it time for us to move on again?"
He shut the furnace door to smolder hotter from within. "Soon."
~fin~