Yo, you, bulletproof in black like a funeral
The world around us is burning but we're so cold
It's the few, the proud, and the emotional
~Fairly Local, twenty one pilots
Pain
"Didn't see that coming?" Was the last thing she heard on her communicator, the one that was tuned straight in to Pietro's. And then there was nothing. Not. Even. Breathing.
They'd had a connection recently, and at times knew what each other were feeling. They could tell when they were close to each other, but that connection had snapped. It was completely gone.
Wanda didn't need to be told that Pietro was gone. She could tell that he was dead. She could tell that he would never be back.
Pain. Agony. There was no word for how she felt. No word to describe how much this hurt. Pietro was everything to her. Everything and more. He was a shoulder to lean on at all times, no matter how bad things got.
He was the only thing that was constant in her entire life. The only person that had stayed with her forever and always. And now he was gone. Now he couldn't be her constant, because he couldn't move, couldn't breathe. His heart had stopped beating. Pietro, her brother, her baby brother, no matter how much he pretended otherwise, was dead.
She felt so much pain. It was like a part of her was gone. Not just a part of her, half of her. Because when they were children, they were inseparable. They did all that stupid stuff that twins do, dress similarly, finish each other's sentences. But now it looked like she was going to be left hanging.
He died quickly, so he couldn't be in too much pain. He couldn't have been. But he must have been in pain. From the bullet wounds. They must have been painful. Being ripped apart by metal. So much pain.
She felt the pain exploding from her in the form of a telekinetic wave, destroying every single Ultron-bot that was in the church, maybe all the one's outside too. It was just like all the emotion from her body had to be removed, so it could make room for all pain which needed to be felt.
Red was a good colour for her telekinesis to be. Fire, energy, war, danger, strength, power. But that wasn't just it. Red was such a deep colour, with so many connotations. Passion, desire, love. But most of all; Blood. Blood. The gallons of the stuff. The gallons of the stuff that were pouring out of Pietro's body. So much that it stained his suit, and the spots didn't stay as spots; they all joined together so it looked like the blue was the flecks of non-colouring, not the blood. The blood that was keeping him alive, and then killing him, as he no longer had it in him. If he'd somehow been able to retain the blood, he wouldn't have been dead.
Why couldn't he have run faster? Why the hell couldn't he have run faster? He was faster than a speeding bullet, he had proved that many times, so what was different this time? Was it that he'd already been running a while, because Wanda knew that he had the stamina of a bull. He never got tired. So what was wrong that meant that he didn't have the power to outrun those bullets?
Ashamed and angry. She had the slightest bit of shame and anger. They'd actually worked for Ultron. They'd followed his orders to destroy the Avengers all because of one vendetta against Tony Stark. If they'd just stayed out of this, sure the world might have ended, but he would be alive. He would be alive and she wouldn't be feeling this pain.
Why Pietro though? Why couldn't any of the others got there? Thor, The Vision, Stark, they could all fly, as well as War Machine and Falcon. They could have gotten Pietro. Any of the Avengers could have taken out the gun. Instead Pietro was gone and Wanda was going to find the Ultron that got Pietro and kill him.
She knew it was the main Ultron-Bot, he was in the plane, but got thrown out by the Hulk. He landed in a bus, or was it a train? It didn't matter, and Wanda couldn't tell. She was seeing red, literally. Red warped her vision as she saw him. The murderer. The man, not even man, that had killed her brother.
She didn't see the irony of it, but Tony Stark had taken another thing from her. His bomb took her parents, his robot took her brother.
But she didn't blame him. She had spoken to him now, albeit briefly, and he did genuinely want to do good in the world. He wanted to make sure no one got hurt. And in doing that he'd hurt a whole lot of people.
She hoped the others, the Avengers, would look after her. Pietro had always done that. He'd protected her, from the bullies at school to the bullets in battle.
Wanda walked up to Ultron and tried to demonstrate her pain. But she couldn't. She couldn't display that kind of loss.
She ripped his heart out, if you could call it a heart. It was just something keeping him alive, like a core, a battery. But she ripped it out, slowly, painfully, just like he'd ripped out hers. But it wasn't enough. He was laughing, not in pain. So as the world crumbled around her, Wanda stayed, not crying, like she would have done a few years ago, but angry, rageful and in pain, hoping that she could join her brother in death.
When The Vision set her gently on the helicarrier before flying off again, she was glad that he'd saved her. She was going to make her brother proud. Proud that she could continue and wouldn't crumple in a heap. Proud that he'd died saving a world that his sister could live in. Proud that his sister was an Avenger.
Yes, she was in a lot of pain, and most of it probably wasn't going to fade. Yes, she was an orphan, and had no living family. Yes, she didn't exactky know what to do without him. But she did feel some achievement, as she did just help save the world. But, she did have a brother, in her heart, and Avengers as honorary family. She was an Avenger
She was Scarlett Witch.