4/6/2018: I am very slowly rewriting everything. Thank you for your patience.
X
I
X
Blood:
A mess.
X
Sokovia.
She should have known this was going to happen, she should have read the omens in the flight of birds, she should have suspected the shadows that stretched too long for the time of day, she should have not dismissed the split second her reflection looked back at her from the window of a shop with blood dripping from her eyes in scarlet tears.
She should have done so many things she doesn't even think of doing.
And the thing is, she knows, she knows as well as she knows the metallic taste of her own blood that the universe is threaded with some strange equalizing force, that balance comes in many ways, gentle or harsh, but it comes regardless and with no way to stop it.
This force has never been particularly kind to her. Nevertheless, she doesn't resent it; divinities and unknown powers she prefers not to make enemies of.
The day starts well enough, the nearly constant protests don't faze her, the unstable government she's almost thankful of, as it allows her to phase in and out of what's considered legal with not as much as a mistrustful look in her direction, and the lead seems so real this time. There is a guy, who knows another guy, who had crossed paths with a collector of rare things, who may have heard of the book she's looking for.
The moment she arrives to the building she was told to go and finds it in ruins—the riots, perhaps, aren't that good after all—she grants it to the universe that of course, it makes sense, things are never simple in her life. She should have seen this coming from a mile away.
(She makes things look simple sometimes, always on purpose, but that's another thing entirely.)
By the time she has finally accepted she's not going to find the tome between the smoking rubble, her doc martens are covered in ash and dirt—and as fitting as that may be, it's still annoying when she realises that so is the skirt of her white dress, as well as her hands, and very likely her face. The curse she mutters against the small country holds no power at all, but it's good enough channel for her frustration. For the moment, at least.
Another good channel is the acerbic text she types as she walks, blaming a not-guilty—but never, never innocent—party about the failure of her search. As annoying as he is, Aidan must be too busy with something else to torment her; his reply is straightforward as he can be:
aw ): got u a flight back 2 bruges 7am
As far as her day is going, this is at least good news again, even if she has to wake up earlier than she'd like to catch her flight on time. For a moment, just a moment, she smiles, standing still as she replies back.
For a moment, just a moment, it's like Aisling forgets the way the Moirai like to dangle her fate like a guillotine over her head, sporadically dropping it to cut through tendons and muscle like butter, allowing her neck to heal before doing it again. If she were to blame someone for the way her life balances out, she would like to blame her mother for every single one of her miseries.
(She's aware of the cliché this is.)
But try as she might, she cannot blame her mother for the rumbling of the ground nor the horrified screams that make it to her ears, and even less, when she looks to her left, can she blame it on her the derailed train that's going right her way.
She doesn't close her eyes—she's not afraid of death, that fear isn't compatible with her profession—instead she just frowns as she waits for her inevitably painful death, because this? This seems like a ridiculous way to go, considering everything—
Considering.
Except the huge metal contraption never makes its way to her nor turns her into a red smear on the streets. Death shouldn't feel this painless, not for her, and it shouldn't feel like being swept off the ground with nothing beyond an unpleasant feeling of nausea and light-headedness. It definitely shouldn't feel like she was being carried in someone's arms.
"Are you okay?" The voice, breathless and too close, speaking in Sokovian, proves to be a good anchor for her to hold onto until she's thinking straight again.
(Death 0, Aisling—far too many close encounters to count.)
Grey eyes look up—because that's where the voice comes from—to find impossibly blue ones—too blue, and the shade bothers her— and then her gaze goes higher still until she's inspecting what she thinks it's a very bad dye job on his hair. This bothers her even more.
"Are you okay?" he repeats, this time in English, thick with accent. She can tell he's in a rush, and she's not being exactly cooperative, but maybe, maybe, he can grant her a few seconds while her head unscrambles and she tries to patch together what just happed.
Train. Not dead. Definitely not standing where she had been. Not standing at all, and instead being carried by this… guy. Who somehow, looks like he probably saved her life.
Saved her life.
"I'm fine." The irritation laced in her speech is evident. "Put me down, please."
How dare he save her life.
He does as asked, but not without looking at her in confusion—she snorts, thinking that perhaps he was expecting some sort of thanks from her part, like what he had just done hadn't been the cherry on top to ruin her day. At least he has the decency to look exhausted as he bends to catch his breath, hands on his knees. The only thing that could have made it even worse would have been if he acted like it was no trouble at all, like he was some big hero and saving people from derailed trains was his regular day.
"You—leave," he says, "follow Captain Rogers."
She nods, only because she has no idea what he's talking about, and blinks as he disappears in a blur of blue and silver in front of her.
X
Right, the city? It's not submerged in another riot, as she had previously assumed, instead, she gathers something about an evil robot trying to destroy everything, and the Avengers trying to save everyone—which would explain whoever that guy had been, and the idea that he is an actual superhero only makes matters worse—and the city is also currently floating.
She had come here for a book.
If her self-preservation instincts weren't so sharp, at some point, she thinks that she would have liked to stop, bury her face into her pale palms, and let loose a wild, angered scream.
Alas, she follows Captain Rogers—because the guy chose to refer in that strange way to Captain America, apparently, as if it was pure instinct for everyone to hear Captain Rogers and instantly associate that name to blue, white and red.
She's picking at her nails, still in a foul mood, covered in dirt and ashes, and waiting patiently to aboard the helicarrier when a woman next to her starts screaming. Screaming louder than most people are already screaming, that's it, and while horrified hollering is nothing strictly out of the usual on a regular day for her, the contrast in sounds around her is enough to make her lift her gaze—and now more than ever, she wishes she hadn't.
It all happens fast, too fast, and yet at the same time not fast enough and that's an irony that doesn't get lost on her, that she resents to the core of her bones when she sees the guy, the—ew—superhero that had saved her before, saving now another one of his team mates and a child—like he could get any more horrible—and yet, be too slow to outrun an onslaught of bullets. She wants to laugh. She wants to scream.
With fists tight enough her nails dig into her palms, she's seething. He's not allowed to die and leave her a debt she cannot repay.
X
Wanda screams in anguish, in pain; even before her powers she has been able to feel her brother, even more so if they're near, and in an explosion of raw anger and hurt she tore through metal and debris. She needs to go to him, he couldn't, he couldn't—
X
She's not tall, never has been, and she's been blessed—and cursed—with soft features that take away any possibility of intimidation for her. Her eyes, however, as big and doe-like as they are, manage to tell another story entirely. They're ice and steel, unyielding and terrible when she commands people out of her way, ducking under the panicking ones and pushing through hands that try to latch on her as she's walking by.
She knows how she looks. She looks like she's gentle, like she should be trusted, like she would love to help. Sometimes, between the soft curve of her cupid's bow and the waves of her pale hair, she even looks like she needs help.
It usually stops once their gaze reach her eyes.
She pushes on.
X
Wanda arrives to a secluded area inside the helicarrier, a room just next to the improvised infirmary to treat all the injured. She would stop to offer help to the now homeless, the hurt and the mourning, but she can't even think of doing so with the idea that her brother might be—
The door opens, and there's Pietro on a table, torso bloodied and eyes glassy. She tries to run to his side, but Hawkeye stops her with arms around her, tells her he's getting help, tells her it's okay. She doesn't believe him, but she pauses long enough to notice Captain America in the room too, next to a woman—woman, she says, because her eyes speak of a thousand lifetimes even if her face looks smooth enough to be younger than her—she doesn't know. Her hair is white, and she's holding a knife.
"You're the sister?" Her voice is as smooth and pleasant as she thought it would be, and Wanda nods right before opening her mouth to ask a barrage of question—but the woman doesn't let her.
"He's going to need a lot of blood after this. Stitches too. But he won't die if you take care of him."
X
It's all chaos when she walks through the place, hot on the heels of the man with a bow. He's hollering for a doctor, but even if there was a surgeon on board with all their tools, she knows it wouldn't be enough.
"I can help," she promises to him.
"You're a doctor?"
"I can save him," she answers instead, hoping this is enough to let her through the doors.
Apparently, it is.
(Truth be told, she's not quite entirely sure she can save him, but she'll sooner sell her soul to the highest bidder rather than let him die without trying.)
X
He's a mess.
She can already tell he's halfway dead without even setting her hands on him. He's lost too much blood, and she needs to work fast if she intends to give him a second attempt at being alive.
(It's only here when she realises earlier in the day she had her bag with her, and now she doesn't. She's not sure if it fell when the train nearly killed her, or is someone ripped it off her shoulder in the hectic chaos and she never noticed; it doesn't matter. Except it does, because she doesn't have any of her things with her, no phone, no knife, no herbs, and the lack makes this twice as difficult.
And yet, she has never been a quitter when she puts her mind to something.)
"Get me a knife," she orders, "and a bucket" and predictably, they stall, confused. This is not what they expect her to ask for, but she understands. She's not what they expect her to be anyway.
"Well?" she presses on, gesturing, annoyed, to her patient, "it's not like he's going to be any less half-dead the more you wait."
X
Pietro fades in and out of consciousness. It hurts at first, it hurts so much he could die from pain alone, but then it doesn't, and maybe if his brain was working properly, he would have understood the lack of pain augurs much darker things than the presence of it.
There are voices he can't identify that overlap each other, buzzing, and blurry, blinding lights overhead. A cloud appears right in front of his eyes, and for a moment he things this is it, he's dead, and maybe heading towards heaven, but before he can finish the thought—
Everything fades to black.
X
She stands over him, knife in her right hand—it's an alloy with iron, she can smell it and it makes her nauseous, but it's not serrated and that's where she's counting her blessings—and the left flat, pressed on his chest. His eyes focus on her for the shortest moment before they roll back—
She swears under her breath.
X
It's black.
And then, it's not.
Pietro stands in a strange place, twilight over his head but not a star or cloud on sight. Little lights fly around looking like eerie fireflies. There's no one else, except movement at the corner of his eyes that disappears whenever he turns his head.
What happened?
Confused, he pats down his body to find no injury at all, and when his brain is slowly starting to unscramble and piece together the memories, with the pain and the bullets and the blood and the realisation that he has to be dead—
"No." The voice is female, but has no owner he can see. It sounds vaguely familiar, like he's heard it before, but he doesn't know where.
"God?" he tries.
The voice laughs, nearly hysterical. The sound gives him chills down his spine. He's not sure he's in heaven anymore.
"…Sata—?"
"Before you finish that ridiculous thought," there's a new quality to it, half amused, half irritated, "where are you?"
He looks around to the miles and miles of eternal twilight.
"I don't know."
The voice huffs, and Pietro thinks it sounds more and more breathless, "helpful, aren't you?"
He frowns. It's not like it's his fault. He opens his mouth to answer—
—and there's footsteps right behind him—
"Found you."
—and pale, bloodied hands pulling at his wrists—
Everything goes back to black. He doesn't see the twilight again.
X
With her fingers splayed over his chest and a spell at the tip of her tongue, she counts twelve bullets still lodged inside him, and so much damage it will be a miracle if she brings him back. Or, probably not quite, but something close enough. She knows the human body, she doesn't shy away from blood, from pain, from the path of destruction the bullets left in their wake—she follows broken tendons and shattered bone and organs already beginning to shut off. One of his lungs is half- full with blood. His liver is in shreds.
She knows the human body, and she knows it better when it's broken. The problem is that this time, she's supposed to heal.
She has less experience with that.
But she's decided, so she takes the knife to her forearm and carves out sigils, wincing at the sting of iron on her skin as she binds: blood for blood, metal for bullets, life, because that's the goal, and she keeps adding and adding until she's bleeding from wrist to elbow, the cuts glowing a fain light with every word fallen from her lips, with the intention of her will channelled by her flesh.
It's rudimentary. It's way too generic. But it's the best she can do in limited time.
X
Wanda stares, tears cascading down her cheeks as the woman uses the knife on herself without a second thought. Snow-like lashes flutter closed over her pale cheeks, a frown on her face—she's saying words, whispers of a language Wanda doesn't understand, half musical, half feral, that charge the air with energy, little frozen pinpricks on her skin and she latches onto Clint, nails digging on his arms—
X
The fingers of her right hand move, pulling on invisible strings as she reconnects arteries together, wills the blood back inside them. She can only focus on the worst: what can heal on its own, with time, she will leave for someone else to deal with; there's only so much she can do without risking her own life.
There's a limit to everything.
Sweat breaks on her forehead as she slips more and more into her trance—and oh, how she hates multitasking, like she didn't have enough in her hands un-breaking bone and stitching tissue together and mending organs and healing cartilage, she has to keep a death grip on his soul so it won't slip through her fingers and make it all for nothing—
X
(Later, years later, the witch will want to kick herself for not seeing this omen either. She will laugh when she remembers that through it all, his heart remained whole.)
X
"It's done," she rasps, bent over the bucket, pale as she heaves, "get him a nurse."
Her stomach convulses violently, sending a spray of blood into the bucket that trickles down her lips. She's certainly no stranger to the taste of blood in her mouth, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant when she's vomiting the metallic substance, tears prickling the corner of her eyes. The sound of metal hitting metal is peripheral at best, a confirmation she doesn't spend too much energy focusing on—it all goes on trying to remain standing for as long as she can.
She really, really hates multitasking.
She counts twelve, and then she passes out.
X
Steve is holding up an unconscious girl in his arms, eyes wide as he tries to wrap his head around everything that just happened. Wanda stand like a guard dog next to her brother, watching like a hawk the steady movement of his chest as he breathes—breathing, meaning he's alive, meaning whatever just happened the girl actually managed to save his life.
Clint comes back, bringing with him a Sokovian nurse that gets to work right away.
"Bullets," Steve gestures towards the girl, towards the bucket on the floor, "she vomited bullets."
The archer nods, just once, slowly. And then he frowns:
"What the hell just happened?"