Surprise!

Wanda I: Split

Wanda awoke in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. The pain originated from the right side of her head, fiery tendrils snaking out to wrap around her entire skull as if she was connected to an electrical outlet. It only worsened with each passing second. Despite the agony, Wanda didn't cry out. She didn't clutch her head in an attempt to quiet her raging nerves. She'd tried that the first twenty times her head hurt like this.

It never worked.

The first time it happened, during her first night home from Gravesen, which also happened to be the eve of Pietra's funeral, Mama had rushed her to the hospital fearing some late complication from the separation surgery. They'd tossed her inside scanners while she bit back a scream and fought not to squirm, yet found no physical abnormalities whatsoever. Wanda, clutching desperately at her head while tears streamed down her face, listened to them flounder for an explanation. She wanted there to be something wrong, because then they might have a way to fix it. Instead, she spent the entirety of the funeral quite literally blinded by grief and pain. Mama and Papa clutched each other while she sat beside them, more alone than she'd ever felt in her life. Her only company was the whispers of the other people around her. Some of her more Orthodox extended family on her dad's side muttered that a funeral that took place an entire week after death was no proper funeral at all.

"They should've died together," one said, voice laced with more dismissal than sympathy. "It's not right, being born connected and buried separate."

Wanda had never heard a more true statement.

After the burial, Wanda returned to bed in the hopes that a nap would wipe this headache out, or at least reduce it to tolerable levels. The second her head hit the pillow and her gaze fell on the empty one beside it, the agony spiked and the scream she'd been holding back for the past hours finally erupted from her throat. Mama stormed in as if she expected to find Wanda under assault. When she identified that actual cause of her distress, she crawled into the bed beside her and gathered Wanda into her lap. She placed a comforting hand on the unscarred side of her head and tried to massage away the pain. Neither of them spoke—they didn't need to. They both knew everything the other would have to say. Eventually, Wanda's eyes fell shut and she passed out wrapped in her mother's embrace.

It happened again every night after that for a week. Mama and Papa spent the evenings in the living room with all the people sitting shiva, while Wanda remained holed up in her bedroom unable to tolerate light, much less company. Wanda had thought no pain would ever top that first episode, but each one made the previous seem like a mild dehydration headache. Mama took her back to the hospital and they rescanned her, still finding nothing of consequence. The doctor who'd worked on their case since the beginning, the man who'd recommended they seek separation at Gravesen, Dr. Strucker, proposed the idea that these headaches were psychosomatic. A physical manifestation of grief.

"It's not uncommon in people who have lost someone close to them to have fevers, headaches, or other symptoms," he explained. "It makes sense, given the closeness of this lost loved one, for the physical symptoms to be more severe."

"What can we do to help them?" Mama asked.

He went through a list of techniques for dealing with migraines, another type of headache often presenting no known physical cause, but ultimately concluded that it was possible nothing would help, given the nature of the symptom. When it happened again three nights later, they tried cool compresses, pressure points, peppermint oil, and everything they could think of, but nothing worked. The pain reached such an apex that Wanda ended up vomiting in the bathroom for an hour and a half.

There was no schedule to them. Sometimes they struck late at night, rousing her from a deep sleep, but sometimes they presented in the middle of the day too. Wanda could be eating dinner, watching the Dick van Dyke Show from her father's box set for the hundredth time, or doing physical therapy to learn how to stand up straight after listing to the right for fourteen years and they would strike, reducing her to a sobbing, curled-up ball of anguish.

Wanda started dreading going to bed because she feared a headache would wake her up. She sat up against the headboard on Pietra's side of the bed—because it felt less wrong to have emptiness to her left than to her right—and cuddled the bear Vision in her arms, dredging up the memories of Tony's advice. He'd reminded her that, while Pietra didn't, she still had a life and she ought to live it to the fullest in her sister's honor. What kind of life was this? Debilitated by headaches that didn't even really exist.

She looked Vision in the eye and apologized to it as if it were Pietra.

She slept through that night without pain.

Mama and Papa sent her back to school, thinking that keeping her busy might distract her from her grief and reduce the headaches. They didn't account for the other kids at school and their cruelty. All eyes fell to Wanda the instant she stepped into the classroom. Nobody approached her, nobody said, "Sorry for your loss," even though some of these kids had been at the funeral. They all just watched her like she was a circus exhibit. None of them confronted her directly, but she heard all the rumors within a few days of returning.

"She's not even a real person."

"Neither of them were going to survive separation, but she sapped Pietra's life force to keep herself alive."

"They were both cursed from birth."

"The surgeons had to choose which one to save, and she manipulated their minds to pick her."

"She's a witch."

Wanda kept her head down and refused to engage with any of the other kids spreading falsities about her. She wondered if they would have said the same things if Pietra survived and she died, or if this meant they'd always preferred her over Wanda. Frankly, it didn't matter. The fact they would ever say such things ensured Wanda wanted nothing to do with them. She tried to tune them out, but it was hard to do that without Pietra whispering in her ear. Telling someone wouldn't fix it, she knew. Since they weren't speaking directly to her, technically they weren't doing anything wrong. Her tattling on them would only make them hate her more.

When her teacher handed her the first test since her returning, she continued holding out her hand for the blindfold before realizing she didn't need it anymore. She blazed through the test, not bothering to check if her answers were correct. Then she cried in the bathroom for half an hour. That night, she had her worst headache in weeks.

She wondered if Pietra would have suffered like this if Wanda died. With no way of knowing, she convinced herself that her sister would have thrived, refusing to let this loss hold her back. Pietra would have been so much better at this. Every time these thoughts started to spiral in her head, Wanda tried to remember Steve and Tony's advice. They told her to make this half a life as good as it could possibly be, and she'd warned them she might not be able to. At this rate, she certainly never would. How could she find the good pieces of life and hold onto them when there weren't any? Loneliness and sorrow tainted everything around her, from her favorite show to her reflection in the mirror. Her reflection she hated most of all because it looked just like Pietra.

When they were younger, she and Pietra had begged their mother to let them dye their hair because it was all the rage. "All the girls at school are doing it," they'd insisted.

"Not all of them," Mama had replied sternly. They brought it up every night at dinner for weeks, but Mama never relented. Their hair remained a boring dark brown. Wanda didn't ask this time, just went out and did it herself. She had it bleached and dyed a light coppery red, desperate for anything to make her look less like her dead sister. Beyond changing her face via magic or plastic surgery, it was the best she could do. The first time Mama saw it she blanched and opened her mouth like she was about to scold Wanda, but stopped halfway. Wanda stared back at her defiantly, daring her to say something. She said nothing. Neither of them brought up her hair color again.

Pietra's rings still sat on their dresser. They hadn't worn them when they went to Gravesen, but most days beforehand they'd been a constant on their hands. She and Pietra had one set of matching ones from their grandmother, but Pietra's had been resized because her hands were ever so slightly smaller than Wanda's for some reason. Wanda put her own ring on her right ring finger as she always wore it, but then added Pietra's. It was small enough to fit snugly above her second knuckle, right next to her own. She started wearing both sets of rings, having to change up which fingers for some of them to accommodate the difference in the size of Pietra's. It made it just a little bit easier, to carry something of hers so close. Whenever she sat alone at school, it comforted her to twist them around her fingers.

And when the whisperings of, "Witch, witch, witch," grew particularly loud, she could pretend they were magical and had the power to shut them up. If only they had the power to bring Pietra back.

~0~

Almost a year passed before Papa found it. A year of taunting from the kids at school, sobbing breakdowns, and headaches so severe they sometimes put her in the hospital, unable to keep food or water down for days at a time. Wanda hadn't even known he was researching ways to help her, but he announced it at dinner one night: Twinless Twins International. A global support group for people who'd lost a twin, hosting their annual conference next month in New York. For the first time in months, Wanda saw a glimmer of hope. An opportunity to talk to people who understood sounded like exactly what she needed.

She registered as soon as possible and started counting down the days. That night, she held Vision tight and pleaded with him to bring her dreams of a brighter future. Her sleep was dreamless, but that was better than nightmares of people chopping away at her head or tantalizing visions of the past that only reminded her that Pietra wasn't here anymore. Wanda called it a win.

The day of their flight arrived an eternity later. No matter how near or far it was, this day couldn't come soon enough. She and Mama bid Papa farewell as he dropped them off at the airport. Wanda spent the flight nursing another of her headaches, although thankfully a mild one. Though she was much too old to be seen in public carting around a teddy bear, she kept Vision with her instead of stowing him in a bag. Ever since she got it, she hadn't liked to be parted from the stuffed animal.

Stepping off the plane back in the United States brought back memories of her last trip here, when she'd had Pietra by her side. Her headache spiked, as if being near the last place her sister was seen alive aggravated it. She wondered what Gravesen looked like nowadays, if any of the people she'd met last year were still there. Wanda doubted it. And she started to doubt her sanity when, on their way out of the airport, she saw Tony Stark sitting on one of the benches near the restroom, a suitcase beside him and a backpack slung over his shoulder.

She stopped in her tracks to gawk.

"What's wrong?" Mama asked.

"Nothing," Wanda insisted. She took a step closer and rubbed her eyes to make sure she saw clearly, but it was definitely Tony. Another figure she recognized stepped out of the bathroom and joined him: Parker. Now Wanda was certain. However, they appeared too preoccupied with their conversation to recognize her. They stood up, joined by three men and a woman she didn't recognize, and started heading out. Wanda instantly decided not to let this opportunity slip through her fingers.

"Tony!" she called. The boy looked in her direction and his eyes lit up with recognition. He and Parker split from the group of adults and walked over to her.

"Wanda? Is that you?" Tony asked.

"Yeah," she said. Suddenly, a smile burst onto her face. It had been too long since she'd seen a friendly face other than her parents.

"Oh my God, it's been so long. How are you?"

"Alright," she said hesitantly. She didn't want to reveal just how miserably she'd failed to uphold his advice. Besides, now that she was here she suspected things would get a whole lot better.

"You've still got Vision!" he announced, eyes falling to the teddy bear still clutched in her right arm.

"Yeah, of course. He's my best friend," she said light-heartedly.

"That's great."

"What are you doing here in New York?" Parker asked.

"I'm here for a convention. Twinless Twins."

"That sounds great."

"I certainly hope it will be." She paused, and then blurted out something she didn't realize she'd been sitting on since she left Gravesen. "I've really missed you guys."

"We've missed you too. After you left Gravesen, things got a little crazy," Tony said, re-shouldering the backpack that had started to slip off his shoulder.

"Crazier than they were while we were there?"

"Definitely," Parker stated.

"How is everybody? You two look well," she said, noting that Parker looked nowhere near emaciated anymore.

"We're good, we're good," he said. "Except, uh...Clint passed away a few weeks ago."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that."

"Yeah…thank you. But the rest of us are doing good."

"That's great. Where are you guys going?"

"Oh, we actually just got back. We spent a week in Malibu together with our parents," Parker explained, gesturing to the group of adults patiently waiting back by the bench where they'd been sitting.

"Sort of a joint family vacation kind of thing," Tony added.

"That sounds nice." Wanda trailed off, looking between the two of them. A joint family vacation. That meant they were basically brothers. And they seemed to be still in contact with the rest of the kids from the hospital. Wanda wished she'd had that kind of support over the past year. The people she'd met at Gravesen were some of the kindest, most supportive she'd ever met. They'd carried her through the darkest day of her entire life.

"I'm so happy we ran into you," Tony continued. "You're the only person from our group who's not in the new chat."

"New chat?"

"We made a group chat for all the people who were at Gravesen at that time, so we can still keep in touch when we're not in the hospital together."

"It's called the Avengers," Parker chimed in.

"Avengers?"

"I rearranged the letters in Gravesen to spell a new word. Thought it sounded cool," Tony explained.

"It does sound cool."

"Do you want to be in it?"

Wanda had never wanted anything so much in her entire life. "Yes please."

Tony added her to the chat and sent a message welcoming her to the group. One of the adults called his name and gestured to their watch. "Be there soon," he called. "Sorry Wanda, but we've gotta get going."

"I think running into you here was more than a coincidence," Parker added with a grin. "I hope you enjoy the convention."

"Thanks. I'll talk to you later," she said. The boys headed back to their families and waved goodbye as they headed out.

"Who are those boys?" Mama asked.

"Tony and Parker. I met them last year at Gravesen," Wanda explained. She agreed with Parker—running into them here, in a crowded airport in one of the largest cities in the world, couldn't possibly be a mere coincidence. Wanda suspected that some other force was at play in their serendipitous reunion. Even without the Twinless Twins convention, meeting them made this trip completely worth it.

The religious faith of these characters is not something often addressed in the MCU, except for Daredevil (which isn't even MCU so nevermind) and that one throwaway Steve line in the first Avengers about there only being one God, but especially since this chapter deals with a funeral, I wanted to explore some religious tradition. In the comics Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are the children of Magneto, a Jewish man and Holocaust survivor, and a Romani woman, but the MCU unfortunately wiped their heritage from their backstory. So, I thought I'd bring a little of it back for this AU. I know very little about Romani culture, but a large portion of my family is Jewish, and I generally feel better about writing what I know from real life rather than writing from research, so I decided to incorporate it here. Jewish tradition dictates that a body should be returned to the earth as it was born, which for most people means no embalming, no tattoos/piercings, etc., but it adds a whole new dimension of tragedy to Wanda and Pietra's story.