Time
Notes: I do not accept the canon, but I am trying to process it. Character death.
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Pietro lives in the moment.
It's as close as he gets to explaining how he experiences time. Time is an endless thing that stretches out before him in slow waves. In every hour there are 60 minutes. In every minute there are 60 seconds. In every second there is an hour for Pietro, and that's on the good days.
On the really bad days he finds himself dropping under even further. The hour stretching out into hours or days. His mind speeding along so fast that even his own body couldn't keep up with it. A mental prison that it takes Wanda's gentle, grounding touch to break him of. To regain control of himself.
It's hell. Pure and simple when he slips that far, and it hasn't happened as much the older they get but he still knows when it's coming. Knows when he's slipping under and he reacts without thought. Mind spinning under the endless weight of time as his body becomes a too still prison. Moving slowly no matter how hard he pushes for it to be faster.
He lets his mind wander usually. Detaching it from the world around him because staring at the same spot for days or weeks can drive a man mad. He thinks and dreams instead. Of things already past and things that might come. Spinning stories both old and new to keep him occupied and sane until Wanda can coax his mind back to rights.
It won't happen though. Not this time, and Pietro doesn't greet his loss of control with the usual dread this time. Pietro stays his mind long enough to look, to take in the still tableau before him.
He can't see Hawkeye's face, and that's a shame, but his arms are strong and firm around the child. Body curled over and around in needless protection. Pietro doesn't need to look to know the distorted trajectory of bullets is gone. It's there, in the back of his throat. Metallic and bright, waiting for his body to speed up. To catch onto what his mind already knows and is trying to escape from. The pain moving too slow for him to feel just yet as he lets himself go.
One last time.
To dream about what would happen afterwards, what could have been.
Wounds and pain. There's no escaping that, not with any of them, and especially not with Barton over there. Fragile and human but too stubborn to admit that he's running way out of his league, and damn Pietro for being a such a sucker for an underdog.
He'd taken a sort of perverse joy in throwing the man around the few times they met before. A simple shove at half the speed Pietro could manage more than enough to take him, the least of them, out for the count. And that should have been it, but the man is stubborn.
He's so very human, so very aware of it and all the mortality it means, but he doesn't give a damn. It had angered Pietro when the man he thought out for the count got back up, and had hurt Wanda badly enough for Pietro to feel it. An anger that had stayed even when Wanda had seen the truth of Ultron. Seen the truth of what they had both helped bring about.
They'd been naive, and that sigh is as much Wanda's as his own. Regret is fleeting though in the face of victory, and Pietro feels the quite pride and joy that emanates from his sister even as she slumps against him. Weary and tired from the fight. From the death and destruction that they're shielded from in the new plane that came for them all.
Barton watches them closely even through one swollen eye. His face streaked with blood and grime, and even Pietro is too tired to make an issue of it. The energy that makes him so restless nearly used up for once as he sits and holds his sister. Waiting for sleep and food to recharge. The others a silent and wounded presence around them. Each in their own little sphere of reflection that doesn't touch on them.
"Got nothing to say?" Barton eventually asks in a croak that carries over the rumble of engines coming to life. There's a smirk hovering on the edge of his lips but his eyes are kind. An oddity that Pietro had noticed when the lines shifted and Ultron and the Avengers switched the meaning of ally and enemy. "You're a big damn hero now. You ready for these leagues, junior?"
Whether the man's referring to the fight or something else Pietro honestly doesn't know, but he won't give Barton the satisfaction of knowing that. He dredges up a smirk in response and can feel Wanda's warm amusement fill that special spot in his mind that is hers and hers alone. "I've always been there. The question should be can you keep up with me, old timer?"
Barton will have a nice laugh, Pietro thinks and skips the boring parts. The suspicious questioning. The proving of loyalties or whatever might come next, maybe the painful question of where he and Wanda truly belong.
Wanda looks radiant in red and spins in delight. The silk fall of the dress flaring out before settling again over her bare toes. She's laughing inside and out as she's dressed in the color she's always loved best. The vibrant red something so hard for them to find and keep before.
"I have four of them," Wanda says in their native tongue. An indulgence she only allows when they are alone because it is rude to speak it around others who don't know it. "They asked if I wanted another color, but why would I?"
Pietro laughs with her and feels no envy at her freeness in spending Stark's money on frivolous things. It's blood money for all the protestation the others put up, and Pietro feels no guilt at using it. His anger at Stark is an ember though these days, prone to flaring like Wanda's skirt, but a mere fraction of what it was before.
It's hard to rage at a mirror after all, and Pietro has enough of his own guilt to deal with.
"It's beautiful," Pietro says honestly, and doesn't stop watching his sister even as he has to get up and move. His own clothing is specially designed and not as frivolous. Made to withstand the friction of the speed he can achieve without being destroyed in the process. They last longer than anything Strucker had given him before.
"It is," Wanda says with a frown as she stops spinning to look at herself critically in the mirror of her room. The open door to Pietro's mere feet away. A door with no lock to keep them separated again. "Do you think he will like it?"
Vision. The robot, the being that had come from the whole destruction of Ultron. Pietro doesn't know what to think of it, him as Wanda keeps insisting on, and he can feel her mild disapproval at the stray thought.
"He will like it if you tell him to like it," Pietro says and picks up a yellow straw hat with tiny purple flowers threaded in it. He plops it on her head at a ridiculous angle just to see her face screw up. The scent that wafts from it as she throws the horrendous thing aside is light and pleasant. "I don't see what you see in the robot."
"He's kind," Wanda says as if that's all the explanation needed, and it really is in the end. Her lips turn up in a sly smile as she side-eye him. The black she paints along her lids turning her gaze witchy. "I could say the same of you though, brother. What do you see in him?"
Kind. Kind is a keyword, Pietro thinks. They are all kind in their own way. Gruffly and sarcastically, maybe even more than a bit deadly. Kind and stubborn and not willing to back down no matter how many times Pietro knocks the man down on the training mat.
"You're a one trick pony," Clint says as he rolls to his feet with a fluid grace that should not be natural, and Pietro may make use of his speed to see that from all sides before the man settles himself back on his heels. Bare hands coming up in an unmistakable gesture that makes every muscle in his bicep and forearms stand out. "Try that again. Let's see how far you get this time."
And maybe Pietro will down him again, or maybe the stubborn man will surprise him. It's likely. He's already surprised Pietro so much. Maybe it will be a counter Pietro doesn't see coming, or maybe it'll be a broad and calloused hand lingering too long. Or even soft lips pressing past a guard that isn't there at all.
Maybe.
Pietro's sure there would be a day though. A day in a field of flowers. Red and gold and purple like the field he and Wanda used to call their own when they were very small and nothing bad ever happened. When the world was bright and all was right.
Wanda's laugh will ring out again and her robot will watch her. Patient like human men never are, and caring like no one other than Pietro can be. The perfectly programmed being to care for and watch over her. Never doubting her, never harming her, and adoring her above all else.
"You look happy," Clint's eyes will be blue. An amazing color that he's not seen up close enough. Smile teasing and kind even as he reaches for Pietro. Solid hands closing around him to ground him and calm the way he feels like he can vibrate right out of his own skin. And maybe his lips will be soft, or maybe they'll be chapped. They'll be warm enough to chase away the taste of blood and that's all that will matter.
Pietro no!
Wanda's touch is grounding but not gentle. The fingers that unfurl from her spot in his mind are red-hot and desperate. A scream of pain and loss that he can't comfort as his mind stops and slams back into his body with all the force of every single bullet that pierced his body. He can feel each one in him, can feel his body trying to heal around them, but it's too deep to matter.
The pain is blinding and his body is as grounded as his mind. The speed falling away as Barton blinks those amazing eyes at him. Shock giving way to horror as blood bubbles out of Pietro's lips.
The laugh escapes him as a breathless sigh as what could have been gives way to what will be, and Pietro finds it in himself to smirk one last time. "You didn't see that coming?"
He thinks he hears another scream, but he can't tell if it's from inside his mind or not as he falls.
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