Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or these two precious children.
Spoilers for Age of Ultron.
As children, they wander.
It is dangerous in the city. Mama tells them that in the Sokovia of her childhood, the streets were calm and airy with laughter. Our neighbors were like that too, she says, to the west. Your tata comes from there. It's rainy there and cold, but he liked the big old houses climbing into the sky, the pattern-dresses that the girls all wore, flowers in their hair. Before the war - that was our home, and many others' too, before Tata, before me. The streets that the twins wander are littered now with refugees, and Tata warns them to stay indoors. It's too dangerous for you, he says, and no matter that they want to see the soldiers at daybreak, or hunt for stars at night.
They learn the advantages of cleverness. They hide rations in their blouses: bits of cheese, fruit, breadcrumbs like in that story Mama reads to them in the evenings. Be careful, my loves. Witches hide among these streets, behind old buildings — all the witches are after you, ljubavi. Don't wander too far from home — but the last part she never says aloud.
They wander anyhow. The gas-lamps bloom like daisies through the smog as they stumble, hand-in-hand, into the city. Wanda silences them with her eyes — one by one by one.
Pietro, she says. Have you ever met a wicked witch?
The smog pushes against the flames, against the glass — thick as rainfall, thick as death. It only ever rains fire, now, and diamond dust; red water dripping in the middle of the street, and the twins have a new game: count the days until the birds descend. Open their beaks and scream come and see. You're getting a little old for fairytales, aren't you? Pietro's mouth twists sharply; always like him, small and quick. But the crony look suits you.
"Does it," she says, she with her dark eyes and shadow-colored skirts. She, who carries her mother's tube of brick-red lipstick like a war-baton. "Brother."
She'd thought that witches would smell of burnt-sugar ovens and fly on broomsticks. She's wrong. They smell like smoke and filth and there's no flying to be done; only brief moments where she finds herself outside of her own mind, or where lampposts burn a little too brightly under her scrutiny. With her broomstick she sweeps up breadcrumbs in their tiny flat, before Pietro can find and devour them. Eat too many, and you can't escape through the bars.
No, she tells him, and again.
(The earth trembles and the witch's shriek is lost in the fire and roar of earth falling down, the pounding of bullets into flesh. No, she isn't ten anymore; but she screams like a child lost in the woods, staring into the oven's mouth, watching her brother burn.)
What about me, then, sister? Her brother's teeth are pointed white and feral in the sickly light, his silhouette built lean but strong — more a man than hungry boy, picking at candy canes and lemon gumdrops. Am I witch, or warrior, or wolf?
And she thinks: what big eyes you have. What big fangs.
But that's a different story, and she knows how it ends. They've heard them each one.
What big arms you have, she whispers instead, and he can only laugh — the silver tongues of flame blinking down the street like eyes.
The better to protect you with, he says, and yes: his voice is a throaty growl. Wanda.
She doesn't know about beauty or grace — she doesn't look at the street-girls or the boys who won't hold their hands the way she holds Pietro's. And she doesn't know much about the world, except that it's violent and sometimes it moves when she's not looking, or when she moves her fingers just so. But she doesn't tell Mama, because she's still not allowed outside — not even with Pietro to protect her with his wolf's teeth and his big arms, not even if it stops raining dirt and fire and shells. There's a war on, and it does not matter that we already lost long ago.
I would kill for you, sweet little sister, he tells her, and rests his head on her shoulder. He nudges into her hair like a wolf, and she knows that what he really means is I would die for you.
(She isn't ten anymore. Now Wanda calls herself a witch, and no amount of breadcrumbs will lead her back to him.)
Sister, Pietro says. Watch yourself. Mama with a storybook in her hands.
I hear there's witches in these streets.