Summary:

Sometimes trying to overcome grief doesn't work.

Chapter 1

Andrej has been doing well for several long months when she finds he is not matching to his usual schedule. They have found a comfortable pattern, over those months, of waking, eating, training, eating, training, talking, eating, sleep. Just as Wanda had grown accustomed to the patterns she had formed with Pietro, so too had she grown accustomed to the patterns she had formed with Andrej, if not to the same intensity.

That he had broken them made her uneasy.

Wanda wandered that evening, until she found Andrej in the rec room, with Vision and the others. They are clustered, standing in a group, bar Andrej who is perched on a billiards table, heels kicking against the wood, and Hawkeye, who leans into the conversation over the back of the sofa. When Wanda enters quiet falls. Wanda's eyes narrow.

"We were considering something," Vision says, by way of an explanation, and moves to one side. Behind him Doctor Cho stands, neat in her tidy white-and-blue medical gear, one hand light on Vision's magenta wrist, as though she had just been checking for a pulse.

"We know you grieve your brother." It is Thor speaking now, and he sets Mjolnir down, with a gentle kind of certainty. "I more than most know what it is to lose a sibling irretrievably, if not in the same way. We were considering things which might help you."

Wanda blinks, eyes darting between them all. Doctor Cho's voice is soft when she speaks. "We have a sample of your brother's DNA, and we have my Cradle technology. Andrej has said that you have said you have some of your brother's memories. We were wondering if from that you could reconstruct his consciousness, if you were as connected as the links you've made to Andrej and to Vision suggest."

Wanda's throat and mouth go dry. Her head twitches, and then she shakes, not her head, but her whole body, shuddering and shivering, as though freezing. "No," She manages to get out. "No." She cannot think of this. Think of her brother back. She is certain she has not enough memories in her head to make her brother as he was, she is certain of it, and if she does not have all his memories, he would come back wrong. Looking at their faces she does not know if they understand this, and dares not look into their heads, not now. She wonders if any of them would fully understand what it would mean to have Pietro back, but wrong. They are not twins. None of them are half a whole as she and Pietro were, as she still feels she is. If half the whole is wrong, and riddled through with holes, so too must the other half be.

She dares not bring her brother back.

A cold hand closes around hers. Small fingers. Small bones. Andrej's soft skin, not Vision's metal flesh. Wanda drags in a breath through a mouth already too dry. The breath dries it out more and when Andrej breathes a mist of snow and ice before her she feels more grateful than she thinks she ought.

"Wanda," Andrej says. "Talk to us. We considered this for you. What do you think?"

Wanda swallows. Wanda wraps her fingers around Andrej's, uncurls them, and curls them around again. Her other hand, her right hand, twitches back, as though to take Pietro's. Pietro's hand does not touch hers. Pietro's hand is not there. Pietro, she reminds herself, is dead. Wanda shakes her head. "I can't. I can't. He'd come back wrong and that's worse than him not here at all."

Andrej tugs at her hand, the Widow moves forward. None of the others move, just watch. Gently, Natasha and Andrej guide her to a chair, settle her down. When she focusses again she sees Hawkeye opposite her, still perched on the sofa. His eyes meet hers, pale blue eyes to her dark brown, and, ever, ever so slightly, he nods. Wanda remembers the talk he gave when Novi Grad flew, and draws in a breath.

"I want my brother back. Of course I do. But I want him, and not some clone created in a Cradle, not some lie made of memories and flesh. I want Pietro, and he is buried." The others are still watching, quiet, and Wanda knows she must speak quickly, must banish this conversation, before her mind loses sense, gives in to loss, and agrees to try to make her brother again. She wants her brother back, more than anything, but she cannot let him come back wrong. "I don't know if I have enough of his memories. Even if I do how are we to wake him? He is human, not an android like Vision. A strike as powerful as the one which woke Vision would destroy him, would kill him all over again."

Thor nods slowly. "This is true," He says, "But Mjolnir answers to me. I can summon a lesser strike, should it be necessary. Besides, Stark did plan to wake him differently before your brother unplugged it all."

"And," Vision says, "I have the stone. It may help you find memories of your brother, or even hold some of its own, given its connection to you through your gifts."

Wanda looks over them all. They are watching her wordlessly. Even the Captain, and Colonel Rhodes. Stark is nowhere to be seen, but all the others of their team, all who had a part at Novi Grad, all who were there when her brother died. Natasha's face wears a slight frown, and she crouches before Wanda. Her voice is pitched so low that only Wanda can hear.

"You can take time. He was your brother, your twin, not ours. You don't have to choose now." The Widow's thumbs graze gently over the skin under Wanda's eyes, sweeping away the tears that threaten to overwhelm her. "You have time to choose. You can think this over as much as you need, talk to whoever you need, search your mind for memories as much as you need." Natasha locks her eyes with Wanda's and her words are as open in her eyes and tone, as in her mind. Wanda feels the words rising, auburn and blood on clear pale snow, even as Natasha says them, "It's your choice Wanda, more than anything. It is not anyone else's."

Wanda nods, and bows her head, and lets her tears splash her hands.

Andrej knows the choice Wanda is making is not a choice. He had seen the twins' closeness before it was bound eternal by their gifts, and knew neither would be well without the other. It is not a choice for Wanda, when the options are to be half or to be whole.

"Wanda?" Andrej's voice is gentle, and he waits for her to look up at him, at the emptied room, before speaking on. "What do you want us to do?"

Wanda doesn't shrug. She doesn't shake her head. There is no uncertainty in her posture, in her face. When her mind links to Andrej's, her quietly brooding cathedral to his ever-moving snowstorm, the silence is breathtaking. Nothing in her mind is singing. Nothing in her mind is dancing. All in her mind is thinking, each part sat at their pew and studying their scripture, studying the core tenets of themselves. Dotting amongst her scarlet and black are spots of silver, reading the scripture too, but migrating together. There are even some of blue and as Andrej rises like a cloud over the glowing congregation he sees just how interwoven she was with her brother.

Wanda? His voice echoes in the silence of her cathedral. Wanda? No part of her mind seems to respond and Andrej floats, silent, watching. A small sphere of scripture floats to him, brown and black, edged in scarlet and full of memories. The fingers of his thoughtform tap over the cover and let it loose, floating back down to the cathedral floor. The sound it makes in all the silence is soft. I cannot choose for you. What do you want us to do? The silence remains, and Andrej whispers almost in plea, Witch's honour.

There is nothing but the turning of the pages of memory, the silence of the choir, and Wanda, rising from the crypts of her mind.

Wanda wakes from meditation, from tears, from memory and the madness of grief. She had not let herself sink into emotion in too long; the dissociation she had learned when the grief became too much had let her separate herself, and she had needed the full feeling of emotion again. Andrej's voice is soft as snow and sharp as shards, and contrasts against the constancy of her cathedral. She rises on wings of memory and thought, and knows her thoughtform looks like blood.

Wanda?

Her thoughtform is both a bloodied angel and a fallen one, but the wings it rises on spread so wide as wrap about all her congregation in protection, scarlet and blue and snow-white alike. Her voice is a sorrowful sigh, in the expanse of the ceiling, but it is the first response Wanda has offered in all the hours they have hoped for her to talk. No. Not yet.

Andrej does not let his surprise show, To bringing back Pie-

To an answer now. I must think.

Andrej is careful not to point out that she has been doing naught but think for hours now. Not that. Do you want to talk to any of us? Do you want peace and quiet? To you want to go and sit at his gra-

No. Yes. Yes. Please.

Andrej blinks his eyes open, and finds the tablet Stark had pressed into his hands when he'd first started training his powers. She doesn't like me, he'd said. With reason probably, but she's a part of the team, and looks like you may be too. If either of you need to contact any of us, here.

He taps it, his fingers twist, and he sends a single message. It is mere moments before Vision joins them. They do not speak as Vision picks up Wanda, and carries her outside.

Wanda curls on the grass by her brother's grave, and locks her fingers into the soil and verdant blades. Her eyes are glowing scarlet as she turns her gift on herself, tendrils dancing through her mind, bladed and gentle, swift and soft, and finding all the blue and silver and grey they can. Their gathering in the congregation makes this easier, and beneath her great red wings the new-swirling mind of blue finds refuge.

You are safe here , she thinks, Even if you never have a body again, you are safe. The memories she holds she holds close. They are her brother in every aching breath, from the first memories he showed her when their bond was new-made, to the last gasping breath before he died. Darting swift and coloured in silvers, they are all that remain of the strength she used to lean on. The fingers of her thoughtform run over their silvered edges, and she dares not let them go.

Vision stays nearby. Andrej's cold outside has warped weather patterns when he was particularly worried, and the android does not think the ice crackling over the green spelled anything good. Snowsmoke returned to the warm indoors, and Vision stayed, burgundy and magenta by scarlet and black, to watch over Wanda. The thread Wanda links to his mind is as delicate as embroidery, as strong as rope. It stays, golds and reds from both of them and riddled with black and green, between their minds. Vision does not accept the tacit invitation to enter Wanda's mind, and she does not accept the same to his. Vision stands nearby, and Vision waits.

Wanda wonders, Wanda thinks. Wanda strings together links, and makes a method through the madness of grief, and decides what must be done.

She cannot go on without her twin, but she dares not bring back her brother wrong.

Her mind sings down the silence of the string, and Vision's gold gleams warm and glad.

Vision?

Wanda. His tone is polite, is warm, and the gold is gladness shining down the rope bridge.

I need the Mind Stone.

Vision's mind is dancing and silent, a network of neurons, of pulsing shadowed cells, which all glow with stark clarity against the dividing lines of darkness. Each cell is individual, is apart from the others, but all are turning over the same problem: The stone is his to guard, he knows, but he does not want one he knows as friend to know pain even more.

The image he sends to Wanda is frivolous and false, but represents what he would do if he could. Himself, plucking the stone from his brow, and tossing it to Wanda.

You are welcome to what aid it can give, he says, But I cannot take it from me.

The joy Wanda sends to him is bright and beautiful, and boldly red as blood.

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