Wanda Maximoff, ex-Hydra minion, new Avenger, wakes up saying her brother's name.
She used to do this, after their parents died, when they were living hand to mouth and sleeping in alleys. She can remember waking back then, usually receiving and annoyed, "Go to sleep, Wanda," but she wouldn't mind, knowing that he really wasn't bothered by her habit. And she would sleep again because she knew she could never be an orphan, not while her brother was still with her.
"Pietro?" She calls out again in the darkness, still half asleep.
And then horrid reality is flooding back to her, like a harsh, glaring light; she recalls all the events of the past two weeks and her unfamiliar room is too big and the blackness is choking her; she is drowning.
Her best friend and twin has been gone a month and still sometimes she forgets this terrible fact, like now, waking and thinking she only dreamed it. But her nightmare is real. She can cause others to see their worst fears and it is hers that came true, in the end.
"Pietro..." She whispers, feeling grief clawing its way up her throat; she does not allow herself to cry because if she does she will never stop.
Grief is like a phantom pain, like reaching for something with the limb you lost or feeling it hurt when it's not there. But it is not an arm of leg missing; part of her soul has been amputated.
She has no one to speak her native language with and she find herself speaking it to no one, conversing with an empty room; the first sign of insanity. Maybe.
She wants him here now more than ever as she attempts to fit in with these Avengers she has joined. She believes in their cause yes, but they are so different from Hydra, so good, so in to saving stuff and it is hard to adjust especially since some of them still mistrust her, not having forgiven the mind control incident. Not that she blamed them, if someone had played with her mind...
Wanda had fooled herself, thought she was healing, until recently. There'd been a droid attack on the Avengers' training facility; nothing they couldn't handle. And she was fighting, feeling the energy flowing from her fingertips, like electricity while she destroyed three; they broke so easily, and pinning another one behind her. She'd turned, expecting to see a familiar silver blur smash the remaining droid and waiting for Pietro to materialize...and nothing. She'd faltered for a split second, waiting for her backup before smashing the single bot with far more viciousness then necessary. Luckily none of the others noticed the unsettling force of habit.
There is no cure for phantom pains; they come and go without warning, at random times: during a robot battle, or in the middle of the night. And they never completely go away.
Sleep is a good drug against many things: pain, hunger, anger or sadness and Wanda Maximoff tries it again; stifling her grief with a blanket of unconscious. Until tomorrow.