CHAPTER TWO
"What happens if we survive? If that thing doesn't kill us?"
"We find momma and poppa."
"Wanda," Pietro hesitates. Wanda looks at him in surprise, her eyes red-rimmed with tears streaking down her dirty face creating two mirror columns of pale skin on her face compared to the state of the rest of her body. Pietro never hesitates. Not when he and the neighborhood boys learned how to play cards and trick older kids out of their money or candy, and especially not when poppa caught on to what Pietro was doing and sat him down and Pietro was able to talk his way out of punishment when he gave poppa the items he won. He is just like their father in that way – a person of action. "I don't think we're going to find them."
Wanda furrows her brow at him. "Then they will find us, same thing. It will be like at the end of every bad episode, you find out it was all a bad dream. None of it was real."
Pietro looks back at the missile and then down in anger, clenching his jaw as he scoots closer to wrap his arm around Wanda. "We will all be together, soon, Pietro."
Wanda presses herself into Pietro's side, "You'll see," she whispers, trying to reassure him as much as herself.
Hours later, they continue to wait through the distant sounds of helicopters and planes flying overhead. People crying and the shuffling of bricks as they get carted off to clear the area. The screams have quieted down, so has the gunfire. The air around Wanda and Pietro is still hazy and hard to see through, but they can still see the STARK missile five feet away from where they lay huddled together under the bed, shaking underneath the blanket Pietro managed to recover off the mattress. All they have done through the night and most of the day is wait. They continue to wait for the projectile to go off with every slight movement within or around the building. Wait to be saved, or wait to meet their end.
Wanda turns to her brother, her eyes dry and burning. "I'm scared, Pietro. They haven't come for us yet. Where are they?"
Pietro shakes his head and continues to rub his sister's back, trying to keep his sister and himself awake and warm enough until someone finds them.
"I don't know. If they don't find us, and we can't find them, we will stay together."
Wanda draws in a shaky breath, "If we make it out of here, where will we go?"
"I have a friend down the road from here, we can go stay with him no problem."
Wanda looks at him skeptically, not quite believing two twins in a war-torn country will not be a hindrance for another family already struggling to survive.
"What if the police find us and separate us?"
"They won't. We are all we have now and we will stick together, no matter what."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Squinting at the destruction of their building through the bright light after two days of total darkness, and past the collapsed siding, they spy the floor of their home where they were last seated, watching a television sitcom with their mother and father. The floor where Pietro learned how to tie his shoes with poppa, and Wanda learned how to help her mother patch up her poppa's jacket and Pietro's pants. The floor where Wanda and Pietro worked hard to teach themselves the basics of how to read and write. The floor where both of them would cuddle up together with their parents facing the window and watch the stars when the nights were quiet and still.
The floor that now has a gaping hole in it that their parents disappeared through when the first shell hit the building. The hole that now echoes the ones in their hearts that previously housed a live connection to their mother and father.
In the edges of her vision, she can see the ground that has been cleared of rubble farther away from the collapsed buildings that now contains the bodies of murdered friends and neighbors, and most importantly her mother and father – Iryna and Olek Maximoff. Their parents' connections are now gaps. The gaps that now sit on either side of one lone tether that represent Wanda for Pietro, and Pietro for Wanda. Looking at the two of them, you would undoubtedly see two orphans, dirty, scarred, and lost, without their parents. Nothing more and nothing less. You would be correct, however, if the children in question were anything but two determined survivors planning to outlive the ones who tore their family apart. Tightening her jaw, Wanda reaches out beside her to grasp Pietro's hand and squeezes it, resolving to never let anyone take her brother, the last part of her family, away from her.
Jolting awake, Wanda rushes to roll over from where she is laying down onto her hands and knees to dry heave into the clearing. She still feels the dirt from the bombing clinging to her skin and matting down her clothes and hair, can still taste the dust in her mouth making her throat dry, scratchy, and bloody.
Alone. Alone and helpless. Wanda swore she would never be alone, would never be helpless, again. She and Pietro made a deal that they would never be left alone and unprepared again. That they would always have a plan for anything. After the deaths of their parents, they did indeed stay with his friend that lived down the road, hiding in plain sight from local authorities. It helped that Pietro's "friend" was a local man in his early twenties, carving out a space for himself in gambling and other illicit activities that later funded their education and average home life. It also helped that the local authorities didn't give a shit about two orphans unaccounted for when there were thousands in the system. The living situation with Martin resulted in the first screaming match Wanda could ever remember having with Pietro, it worsened her already damaged throat from the accident and forced her to spend weeks silent, brooding, and near tears, allowing it to heal. It turned out to be an even better situation than they could have hoped for if it were just the two of them trying to survive on their own.
Martin provided a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes on their backs, and even helped them from time to time with their schoolwork. This evolved over the next ten years from guardianship to a partnership. He worked on forging connections for them with other people he conducted business with and found places of employment for them. Pietro stayed with Martin and his friends, running games in the warehouse they lived above and keeping people in line. Wanda moved around from job to job, eventually settling down to work for a blacksmith and weapons dealer, Karel, who turned out to be a SHIELD operative working at the nearby base. Karel was the one to help Wanda find her niche after staring down an empty path with nothing to look forward to or work towards after the loss of her parents. The only drive she had was reserved for ensuring Pietro was happy and healthy and living to see Tony Stark fall. During these years of growth, Wanda and Pietro participated in the growing unrest and protests within their city and eventually encountered Wolfgang von Strucker and his research team looking for volunteers.
Shaking her head, Wanda steered her thoughts away from that time, choosing instead to refocus on the gaps within her mind, mainly where Pietro was. They promised each other that wherever one would go, the other would follow. So why is she alone now and where is she that Pietro couldn't follow? Wanda sits back down and runs her sleeve across her mouth, taking a moment to calm down her racing heart and focus on the sounds of the forest around her. Taking in short and slow, shallow breaths she is able to be open to all of her senses.
Opening her eyes alerts her to the fact that she has slept a majority of the day away, or perhaps days away. It is now well into the night, whether just past the beginning of the night or well into the morning, she isn't sure. The ability to tell time is not one of Wanda's strong suits, Pietro on the other hand would know what time it was, the phase of the moon, and the exact time of year. Wanda sits and ponders for a moment on how she got here but does not dwell on it long as she smells smoke coming from nearby. Smoke from a campfire? Smoke from an unintended fire? Turning in the direction of the breeze blowing the smoke around her she sees a distant light through the trees, going uphill instead of the downward slope she noted earlier before her collapse.
Rolling her shoulders back and relaxing her posture relieves the tension in her neck and upper back; tension from waking up in a new area, a potentially foreign environment without her guide, her north star. Pietro was always there, every step of the way for as long as she can remember. Why isn't he here now?
Noting once again that she is still alone, potentially stranded, and without any resources, she grabs a handful of her hair at the nape of her neck and twists it up to put it in a bun. If she is going to get any answers, she is going to have to move towards that fire and scope out the new landscape. Throwing the hood attached to her jacket up to cover her hair and part of her facial features, she starts walking in the direction of the fire, keeping her steps light, and trying to not press down too heavily in the foliage or soil to avoid leaving tracks.
