A/N: Thanks for being patient, both with the writing and the responses to messages and comments (I'm still getting caught up, I swear I'm getting there). I could give you a lot of great excuses for both, but bla bla bla, here's the chapter.

The chapter in which there is a lot of Wanda/Pietro stuff, some Natasha/the twins stuff, a surprise appearance by Audrey, Maria and Phil drinking, Nick Fury being badass (because, duh), and I further the plot by making everyone less happy. Sort of.

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites. You rock!

Next time: Skye/Jemma stuff (because, duh), more intrigue, generous helpings of plot furthering, and we'll find out where May went when she ran off.

And as a reminder, any text [in brackets like this] is spoken in Russian.

(Also, this might be incredibly vain, but God am I in love with this chapter.)

"Bedtime," Jemma announced to the room and its occupants.

Skye was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, and she nodded when Jemma signed the same message through the open door.

Jemma had expected the room to terrify her when she returned, but she wasn't sure why. All evidence of what had happened earlier had been photographed and then cleaned up. Natasha, who was the one doing the photographing and the cleaning, had even tidied up Skye's room. It was a little odd – though Skye was tidy and organized, Natasha clearly took things to the next level.

"You didn't have to make the bed," she said to Natasha, who was perched on Skye's desk chair.

"I did," Natasha said, and Jemma liked her a lot more for those two words alone. "I changed the sheets and the blanket, and the other ones are in the dryer right now."

Jemma looked over at Pietro and Wanda, who were sitting on the pulled-out futon, their chosen bed for the night. The snow hadn't stopped falling and Pietro was worried about Wanda driving due to her mental state, so he'd decided they would stay the night. Skye had agreed to drive Wanda's truck home the following afternoon while Wanda, Pietro, and Jemma drove in Pietro's Jeep. Summer would then feed the girls dinner and drive them back to school.

"How's she doing?" Jemma asked Pietro quietly.

Pietro had his arms around Wanda, and she was still pale and distant, twisting her bracelets around her wrists. Jemma could hear the girl mumbling softly in Russian. "She's…" He considered his words. "She is gone. For now."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Nyet. Phil has gone to the pharmacy with the new insurance cards. He will get medications, bring here. In morning."

"Do either of you need anything?"

"Just for to keep her safe," Pietro said, and he gave Jemma a tired smile.

Jemma nodded. "Let me know if you'd like one of us to sit with her so you can sleep."

Pietro shook his head. "I do not need many sleep. Two of us have always been in situations same as this. If she will not sleep, I will not either."

Wanda's body tensed in Pietro's embrace, and he turned towards her, whispering soothingly in Russian.

Jemma looked over at Natasha. "Are you sure you'll be all right on the floor?"

Natasha grinned at her. "I've slept on worse. Also, if I said no, where would I fit? I'm certainly not going to disturb the twins, and I'm pretty sure Skye doesn't want to cuddle with both of us."

"You could have gone home," Jemma pointed out.

"Ah, it's fine. I don't mind sleeping on the floor," Natasha said. "I've got a toothbrush and a clean shirt for the morning – it's all I really need."

She stood, lowering her voice as she approached Jemma. "And I've got a gut feeling that one way or another, something's going to happen tonight that might need my help."

She didn't mention the twins, but Jemma heard the unspoken subtext all the same.

Skye came out of the bathroom smelling like peppermint, and she wrapped her arms around Jemma.

Jemma leaned back. What's all this about? she signed.

Just happy, Skye replied.

Good. Me too. Jemma looked down at Skye's arms. I know you don't want to hear this, but I need to take those bandages off and clean and redress them to prevent infection.

I don't want to hear that, Skye agreed, a mischievous glint in her eyes. I don't really hear anything.

Get out of here, Jemma signed, rolling her eyes, and she gave Skye a swat. Go get me the first aid kit.

Skye saluted, still grinning her cheeky grin.

It took an hour or so, but finally everyone was in bed and the lights were off and the room was quiet. On the floor Jemma could see Natasha flicking through things on her phone. In the bed next to her, Skye had already turned towards the wall and was breathing in the slow, deep way Jemma recognized as "completely unconscious."

Without her permission, Jemma found her eyes sliding closed. She curled into Skye's warm body and relaxed.

Pietro rocked Wanda back and forth as she mumbled into his shoulder in Russian. Every few minutes her body would tense, her grip on him tightened, and the mumbling turned to whimpering.

"Shh, shh," Pietro murmured. "You are safe here."

"No, no, no," she sobbed. "Not safe. Not safe."

Pietro brought his free hand up and stroked her hair. "Can you try for to sleep?"

"Not safe," she screamed at him.

"Shh, mladshaya sestra," he whispered. Lapsing back into their mother tongue, he said, [I will keep you safe. I will always keep you safe.]

"Outside hurt," Wanda mumbled. "Please outside hurt."

"No," Pietro said firmly.

Her body tensed and her fingers clawed into his back.

[You don't need that,] he told her. [You are the bravest person I know.]

[It will make it stop,] she pleaded, her voice absolutely broken.

[I know. And that's why you can't.]

She let out a sob and smashed her body into his over and over, as though trying to ram her way free from the hallucinations. Pietro hung on, waiting for the inevitable crash.

"Outside hurt please," Wanda begged.

[I love you too much for that.]

[I don't love you. I hate you. I want you to go away. You should have left me there to die.] Her voice was as sharp as shards of glass.

Pietro tensed now, feeling as though he'd been electrocuted. Wanda's grip on his shirt loosened, and he heard her suck in a deep but shaky breath.

Pietro had learned to accept some things about the course their lives had taken. He had accepted the fact that their parents were most likely dead. His mother would have been the last one to hold out, he knew, but the twins were twenty-two and the odds were not in their favor. At one point in time Pietro had spent hours on the Internet, looking for anyone who could reunite him with his mother; now he realized that was pointless. There were bigger things to worry about.

He'd also accepted that being evacuated from Russia and sent to an orphanage in the Ukraine had probably saved his life and had definitely saved Wanda's. They hadn't been particularly well-fed, but somehow Pietro was always the stronger of the two. Wanda spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to give her food to the other children, and Pietro eventually had to put a stop to that. She wanted what was best for everyone else, forgetting that she was someone too. The twins' characteristics – Wanda's generosity and the hope in her eyes and Pietro's strength and dedication – were what had attracted their first adoptive parents to them. (That, and the fact that they were twins.)

It had taken much longer to accept that no matter how much he wanted to, he could not go back and murder their asshole of an adopted brother who had taken advantage of his twin nearly immediately following her first psychotic break. Wanda had been barely able to keep her head above water; she had regressed to the point of not being able to feed herself, her eyes were always distant and she continually spoke to someone no one could see. She was looking for comfort and support in all of the wrong places, and one of those places was their asshole "brother," who for some reason had never been taught by his overly Christian parents that "comfort and support" wasn't a synonym for "rape." (Pietro now believed he only had one brother, and even though Little Bear was a dog, he was still a better brother than "Chad" had ever been.)

He could never accept the first words Wanda said to him after waking up in the hospital following her suicide attempt. [I want to die. You should have left me there to die. Why did you save me?]

At first those words had felt like a punch in the gut. Pietro wondered when Wanda had come to the conclusion that he was the enemy. Then it turned to rage – how dare she not be grateful for what he had done?

It was then he'd made the worst decision in his entire life. He had walked away from her.

Not permanently. For fifteen minutes.

But in the time he was gone something twisted in Wanda's brain and she had gotten free from the restraints holding her to the bed, taken her bandages off, and started picking at the stitches holding her ragged wrists together. He'd found her in a pool of blood on the floor under the bed, and she'd said it again, this time quieter, shaking with sobs. [I want to die. You should have left me there to die. Why did you save me?]

Wanda shifted in his grasp and he could feel her hands going for each other. If he wouldn't let her free to harm herself, she was going to do it even in his embrace, no matter what.

"Nyet," he said calmly. "No outside hurt."

[Have to make it stop.]

"It will stop," Pietro said.

Wanda hiccupped and Pietro felt her arms move again. He pulled back from her and grabbed her arms, turning her so that her back was against her chest, and he pinned her arms against her body, crossing them over her torso, sliding his arms through her armpits so he was able to hold her left wrist in his right hand and her right wrist in his left.

She never knew how much those words she'd said to him hurt. She didn't remember much of her stay in the hospital, and for that Pietro was infinitely grateful. But it didn't stop those same words from feeling like a cheese grater run over skin whenever she said them again.

"No, no, Pietro, no," Wanda babbled. "Make it stop."

She jerked back against him, trying to free her legs. Pietro merely shifted his position and wrapped his legs around hers, completely immobilizing her. "It will stop," he repeated.

[He's coming back here,] Wanda informed him.

[Who?]

[Bad man from the basement.]

Pietro had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but that wasn't anything new. [Why is he coming back here?]

[Unfinished business. He wants what he didn't get the first time.]

[What did he want the first time?]

[Skye.]

Pietro was still confused, but he saw Natasha sit bolt upright.

"Sorry we have disturbed of your sleep," he whispered to her.

Natasha ignored him and spoke directly to Wanda. [How do you know that?]

She rolled her head towards the redhead. [Not done yet. He's going to come back. We're all here. Where else would he go?]

Wanda started to laugh, her terrifying, hysterical giggles bouncing off the walls. [Sitting ducks all in a row,] she managed to say. [Sitting here waiting for him. Going to come find us. Here we are. Here we are.]

"Wanda, stop," Pietro demanded.

She twisted around to look him in the eye. [I'll stop when it stops,] she informed him, and then she went very loose and limp in his grasp. Her next breath rattled in her chest, but then her breathing slowed as she nestled into Pietro.

"This is our pull-out couch," Audrey informed Maria. "I set out some bedding for you as well."

"Thank you," Maria forced herself to say. She had no idea why she'd accepted Phil's offer of overnight respite at the house he shared with Audrey, and she was definitely starting to regret it. Audrey was one of the most stoic and reserved people Maria knew, and that included Melinda, whose picture should have been in the dictionary under both of those words.

"I left the light on in the bathroom and there's a new toothbrush and a glass for water on the counter," Audrey went on.

"Thank you," Maria repeated. Every word that crossed her lips felt like wood, as though eventually she was just going to shatter like a broken slot machine and thousands of wooden nickels would rush out of her mouth.

"Good night, Maria." Audrey stood in the doorway for a moment, hesitating. "And I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for how things are going right now. But you did a wonderful thing today, helping those girls. I know I don't know them personally, but every time Phil talks about them, something comes over his face that makes me believe he loves them."

"They're easy to love," Maria found herself saying.

Audrey tilted her head. "I don't know if that's true. I think they've just got the right kind of people around them who want what's best for them."

Maria nodded as though she understood.

"I'd like to meet them someday," Audrey went on. She smiled at Maria and Maria nearly fainted – Audrey usually only smiled at Phil.

"I'm sure they'd like that," Phil said, coming up behind Audrey. He kissed her cheek. "I brought our guest some milk and cookies."

"A prince among men," Audrey said, returning the kiss. "Sleep well, Maria."

"Thank you," Maria said yet again.

Audrey closed the door behind her as she left, and Phil sat down in the swivel chair across from the pull-out sofa.

"That doesn't look like cookies and milk," Maria observed, taking a seat on the couch.

Phil looked down at the plate he was holding. "You're right. I'm not in kindergarten, so I had to find something else."

"And you chose… bourbon and Snickers?"

"I'm an old-fashioned man." Phil passed her a still-wrapped Snickers bar and a coffee mug filled with bourbon.

"Thank you, I guess," Maria said.

"I also came in because I have some… some not-great news," Phil went on.

"Wait until I've had a few sips," Maria ordered him, and she swigged half the coffee mug's contents and took three bites of a Snickers bar before she faced him again.

"Grant Ward's a free man," Phil said.

Maria wished she hadn't drunk the bourbon so fast. That, or she wanted more bourbon, so she could forget Phil's words. "How?" she asked, stunned.

"Someone posted his bail," Phil answered. "They left Garrett there, but Ward's bail was posted about three hours after he was processed."

"Who do we know who would do that?"

"Nick's looking into it for me," Phil said. "We'll figure it out."

Maria took another long swig of bourbon. "Is it possible…" she began, searching Phil's gaze, "… that Grant Ward isn't our worst enemy in this fight?"

At this Phil drained most of his coffee mug. "God, I hope not."

They sat in silence, clutching their mugs and candy bars like bereft children in a train station, watching the snow fall down.

Several blocks away, at Roy's Diner, Nick Fury sat at the table in the corner. A steaming mug of coffee and a piece of cherry pie had been placed next to him, but he was ignoring them in favor of the open laptop in front of him.

Once he'd gotten word from one of his many sources that someone had freed Grant Ward, Nick had immediately turned to the Internet to figure out what kind of sick bastard would do something like that. So far, he had only the barest idea – and it really wasn't good.

Daniel Whitehall was the name signed on the bail sheet, but Nick had known him as Werner Reinhardt, a shapeshifter who went through identities faster than Nick's ex-wife went through expensive shoes. No one innocent would go to all the trouble Reinhardt/Whitehall did, and he had, in the past, been connected with some extremely shady medical research.

"Then what the hell does he want with this asshole?" Nick muttered, unsure of how Grant Ward could be of use to Whitehall.

He sighed and looked over at the files piled to his left. Phil had dropped them off earlier, and Nick had raced through them with the unbridled but terrified enthusiasm of Indiana Jones escaping from snakes. Then he'd called Phil.

"This girl's trouble, Phil."

"We're all she has, Nick."

"No. According to this she's got real parents."

"Who put her through horrifying physical experiments, left her deaf, and then abandoned her."

"But they're still alive."

"That's our theory."

"Which means they're still out there looking for her."

"You can't possibly know that."

"This file seems to suggest they weren't responsible for her disappearance from that facility, and if I was that batshit crazy, I'd be more than a little pissed that someone snuck in under my nose and stole something of mine."

"What are you going to do, Nick?"

"Something dramatic, I hope."

Nick didn't have a dramatic plan, though. He didn't even have a non-dramatic plan. There was no plan, just wisps of one that could congeal if given the right stimulus.

He just had to find Daniel Whitehall.

Natasha stretched, trying to work out the kinks in her back. Around three in the morning she'd taken over from Pietro and crawled onto the futon to restrain Wanda so her brother could get some sleep. Wanda had stirred and then fought Natasha, crying out to her brother in anguish, but eventually she drifted back into her catatonic state, fingers playing at Natasha's shirt while Natasha's hands were wrapped around her wrists.

Now Wanda was floppy against her, head tilted back on her shoulder, arms relaxed. Natasha surveyed the rest of the room. Pietro had curled up with the blanket and pillow; he looked like a badly-wrapped present, arms and legs akimbo.

Jemma and Skye were facing each other on Skye's bed, and Natasha knew from observation that Jemma was still asleep. Skye was stirring, occasionally bringing a hand up to scratch at the bandages on her arms. Afterwards she dropped back down into slumber, always turning back to Jemma as though they were twins in a womb.

Natasha closed her eyes – just for a second – and when she woke up it was eight-thirty and Skye was sitting across from her, laptop open, typing furiously. An expression of terror and anguish was painted on the deaf girl's face.

Natasha carefully released one of Wanda's wrists and used her free hand to wave in Skye's direction. It took a few seconds, but eventually Skye looked up at her.

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked, keeping her voice low.

Skye shook her head and bit her lip, trying to keep her composure. She licked her lips, then spoke. "They let him out of jail," she said.

Natasha didn't have to ask "who."

"He's out. He'll come back," Skye went on, visibly shaking now. "He'll come get me for real."

In Natasha's arms Wanda let out a soft sigh, and the redhead looked down at the young woman she unconsciously called "girl twin." Last night Wanda had said a good number of terrible things, but now Natasha could only hear a handful of those not-so-crazy-after-all sentences.

Sitting here waiting for him.

Going to come find us.

Grant Ward was obviously a huge idiot if he thought for one second he could come back to the place he'd started this mess and scoop Skye up as though she was softened ice cream.

Natasha Romanoff was many things, but she'd be damned before she'd be a sitting duck.