Wanda doesn't like spinach, and she doesn't like blue jeans, and she most certainly doesn't like to live in a world without her brother.
He sucks. But he's hers.
She feels the bullet pierce his heart like it was hers, and they laugh together as his skin knots itself back together. Death has always known that it has no power over Wanda.
They go with the Avengers back to Stark Tower. Or Avengers Tower now. Everybody Wanda has met seems to call it one or the other. They used to hate Stark but Wanda looked into his head and perhaps Obadiah Stane was a better target for that anger.
Besides, Pietro was always so obsessed with America, and what better place to see the sights from than the newest tourist feature of New York City.
The adults are all talking about them, that much is obvious. They put on the television and let Wanda choose the channel, and then they stood around talking in hushed tones.
"Hey, Wanda, how old are you?"
"Seventeen," she replies, and Pietro snickers at the horror on their faces that they let a couple of teenagers into a battle.
She should have lied. It was funny at first, but adults always get so boring when they know you're not eighteen yet. They had actually literally left home because all anyone ever said was 'Wanda, eat your greens' and 'Pietro, stop stealing arcade machines' and 'Wanda, you can't just rewrite the fabric of reality because you don't like that shoulder pads are back in'.
The stupid Avengers had tazed her. What right did they have now to say that she couldn't go with them to their big secret spy agency or talk to the fancy government men?
"Wanda's not eating her spinach," Pietro snitches, and then dodges the hex she sends in retaliation. "And she's trying to turn my hair turquoise."
"Snitches get stitches and end up in ditches," she retorts, subtly turning the green beans on his plate into slugs.
"What are you, five?"
"What are you, eighty four?"
"Hey, I was born with my hair like this. It's not fair for you to-"
"You were born stupid."
"You were born stupid!"
Stark sighs, and almost drops his face into his mashed potatoes. "FRIDAY, remind me to never have kids."
Wanda and Pietro's heads pop up in outrage. "Hey!"
It's really, really funny to watch Stark fight the dinosaur she made.
Dinosaurs in New York make the news, apparently, which is stupid. Wanda made dinosaurs at home all the time. Sometimes Pietro rode them, and then she made them throw him off and try and bite off his head. They were never fast enough, but she kept trying. One day she'd get it.
The TV is always on. For some reason the Avengers thought that she and Pietro were American-hating zealots who had decided to stop Ultron only because it was their country that got attacked. Weird. They hadn't even joined Hydra by choice, and then Ultron had just been a laugh. Who else got to say they had been a part of a homicidal robot's evil plot?
Whatever. Pietro made her promise not to tell them, because he liked to go on rants about the evils of the USA and how the Cold War should have had a different outcome to see what people said to convince him otherwise. Sokovia wasn't even communist, but nobody seemed to pick up on it.
But yeah, the TV was always on to help them absorb American culture, like they hadn't spent years splitting their time between here and home, so Wanda sees the dinosaurs on CNN as soon as it airs.
"Shit," she says, and flips off Captain America when he reprimands her language.
It takes exactly two hours after the dinosaurs made the news for the elevator to start moving on its own. Stark freaks out, and everyone else gets out weapons, but Wanda just shoves her head in between the cushions of the couch.
"I can totally take us to Vegas if you promise to make me a millionaire," Pietro offers.
Wanda shakes her head. Her brother is annoying but he always does what she says in the end. Everything does. The universe does.
Except for one person.
"Why the hell is Magneto in my building?" Stark yells, and Wanda muffles a scream.
""We're so grounded," Pietro mutters to Wanda. She let him assess the look on dad's face while she hid in the couch. "Like, for life grounded."
"Thigh high boots thrown in the trash grounded or just plain old locking the door grounded?"
"You're not wearing anything other than unicorn pyjamas for the next year grounded."
"Shit."
"Ahhhhhhhh! International terrorist! Somebody put him in jail!" Pietro does a very bad job of pretending to be afraid of Magneto, and Wanda pulls her face out of the cushions to see his face turn from not-amused to Charles-needs-to-calm-me-down-or-I'll-commit-filicide.
Still, the Avengers do sort of move to stand in front of them.
"Aren't you normally the X-Men's problem?" Stark asks, not bothering to put on his suit. His face is a little bit pale, actually. Wanda wonders whether he would be less frightened if she removes the shrapnel from his chest, and maybe then he would try and shoot Magneto with something.
"You have something of mine," dad says. He doesn't take his eyes off them, even though it's far too late now for Pietro to run. They never manage to escape groundings.
Captain America definitely shifts in front of them then. "You better not be talking about those two. I don't take kindly to people hurting kids."
Dad ignores them. "Wanda, Pietro, come."
Death bows to Wanda, but Wanda bows to the guy who pays her allowance.
"Thanks for letting us blow up a city with you!"
Pietro waves, and Wanda totally steals Natasha's jacket from her chair as they stand up and go to their dad.
"Uh, wonder-twins? Want to step away from the creepy terrorist who somehow knows your names?"
"Thank you for finding my children for me," dad says, and are those manners? Uncle Charles would never believe this. Wanda hardly believes it. "They have a tendency to find trouble."
"Children?!"
"We should totally have told them earlier," Pietro whispers in her ear as the shouting gradually dies down. "It's ruined by the fact we're about to be murdered."
Wanda pauses, looks at the adults bickering and weighs up the chances of being heard.
'Want to team up with the Fantastic Four and tell them right in the middle of a massive battle? You can even make it your dying words or something,' she says telepathically, because she doesn't know how well the super soldiers hear.
Pietro grins.
"It was Wanda's fault," Pietro says immediately when dad finally turns back to them after explaining that, yes, even terrorists have kids and, no, those kids don't always like to stay on the island that he owns and makes perfect for them.
She shoves him in the ribs. He could dodge, but instead he lets her and then hits the pressure point on her neck. "He started it!"
"Did not!
"Did too!"
"Enough!" They fall silent, because that's dad's angry voice. "Two months. Two months with no word on where you are and I find you making dinosaurs and fighting robots with Stark?!"
"Not just Stark?" Pietro offers, but that only makes the eyebrows narrow more.
"If wearing spandex is really what you want, there is a perfectly good team right at home," dad says, and Wanda tries not to laugh at the sight of the Avengers realising that Magneto is kind of offering to let his kids join his arch-enemies, the X-Men, because laughing would only piss dad off more. "There is no excuse for disappearing! You had everyone worried sick!"
"In our defence, we did only mean to go to Sokovia for the weekend because it's Aunt Magda's birthday but we were sort of kidnapped by Nazis," Wanda says, because it's true, and also dad's way more likely to believe her than Pietro. She is the favourite child, after all. "And they used this glowing stone thing to brainwash us."
"What?!"
She doesn't care about the Avengers, though. They were a great, fun weekend, but she's sort of tired and not in the mood to prolong being lectured.
"And then what were we supposed to do? When the stone thing was recovered and we got our brains back, there was this evil robot guy we had to stop! You were totally our next call. I promise."
"After making dinosaurs?" But there's amusement in her dad's voice again, and Wanda smiles as he curls her hair around her finger and gives him a hug.
"Stress relief?"
"I suppose I should just be grateful your brother still has a head," Dad sighs, and hugs her back. "Come on. If I don't bring you to Charles and let him know you're safe, I'll never hear the end of it."
"Does that mean we're not in trouble?"
Wanda shoots Pietro a glare, but the damage is done. "Oh, words can't even begin to describe the trouble you're in."
As the elevator door closes, Pietro winks at Barton and mimes shooting him. A second later, there's a phone number pinned to his jacket with a hastily scrawled invitation to play laser tag sometime.
Wanda just scowls. They're being taken to Uncle Charles, which meant one thing: they aren't just being grounded, they're getting detention. Kitty was supposed to be teaching her ballet at lunch but now she's going to to miss it.
Unless... unless she persuades Pietro to bring Kitty along with them next time. And Jubilee too! Not Scott (Scott sucks), but Jean, and definitely Ororo. The Junior X-Men in... well, she's always wanted to visit Asgard.
She winks at Thor before the doors close.