"Getting Used To It"
By darthelwig
***I own nothing. I'm just having fun.***
Wanda sometimes wondered if she was getting soft.
Living with the Avengers, being an Avenger- it was nothing like the life she and Pietro had led. Their lives had been a constant struggle for survival. Against hunger, bullets, the cold, and then the experiments. They had fought for everything they'd gained.
But here... They had given her a bedroom she could fill with whatever she wanted. She had a big, soft bed to cushion her. She could take a hot shower whenever she pleased, eat whenever she pleased. There was no one waiting to snatch things from her. There was no danger.
Pietro would have loved it.
She fretted about it, though, worried about losing her edge. The only comfort came from the rather obvious fact that, instead of lessening her powers, her strength was actually growing. She could levitate now, and her manifested energy was so much stronger than before.
She reveled in the power of it. It gave her a sense of security she had been sorely lacking for most of her life. She would allow no one to ever hurt her again. The only blight on that thought was that she would now never be able to do the same for Pietro.
Anyway, was it really all that awful to let herself adjust and acclimate to this new level of luxury? Wasn't one of the goals in a person's life to better their position in the world? She had done that. And she was still working to fulfill her driving need to help people. She could never leave that behind. She had done a great deal of harm to the world in her quest for vengeance. She needed to atone. Making things right was important to her, just as she had always fought against injustice in Sokovia.
She thought maybe Pietro would be proud of her. That mattered a lot.
This was all very different from the way HYDRA had trained them. There, she and Pietro had been forced to work on their strength and control until they collapsed from exhaustion. They were pushed further and harder every time they made progress, with little regard for them as people. They were weapons, kept carefully and maintained, but still only tools to be used.
Here, things were...easier. They all worked hard, and Wanda couldn't count the number of bruises she had accumulated during combat training, but they were not forced to go beyond their limits. Limits were tested and pushed, but never crossed. She never collapsed during training. She was given time to breathe.
And afterwards, they could shower the sweat off, let the hot water ease the aches. Wanda was quite fond of that part of training.
She spent her downtime with music, books, movies...all things she hadn't had the leisure to enjoy before. She and Vision would talk for hours as they played games. She was enjoying chess a great deal, although winning against Vision was never going to happen. The point wasn't to win anymore. This wasn't a game of survival. This was learning how to just be.
She liked it here, with her friends, her team. She liked the energy of a room filled with them. She liked shared meals and good times. And she liked being able to retreat to the peacefulness of her bedroom afterwards.
When thoughts of Pietro saddened her, she had people to talk to about him. When grief overtook her, there was someone to hold her. She found she didn't need to face the world alone as a broken person. They would bolster her.
She had thought that she and Pietro had been stronger together because they were twins, but she had been forced to reevaluate her thinking. It was trust. It was having someone you knew would have your back. She and Pietro had been that for each other since the beginning. Without him, she thought she would never have that again.
But this team was a family, and she was a part of it, and they made each other stronger just by standing together.
Pietro would be happy she had this, and actually, she was too.