Sign of The Times
Summary: Wanda had grown up with the idea placed in her head that same-sex couples were wrong. Disgraceful. Soulmates or not.
She came to believe these ideas herself, but when she receives her name, she may have to reevaluate her way of thinking.
One-Shot
Throughout Wanda's life, she has been told time and time again that same-sex couples, soulmates or not, are wrong. It didn't matter whose name you had on your wrist, if they were of the same gender as you, then it was wrong. The universe was wrong for choosing someone like that to be your soulmate.
Wanda came to trust these words. These beliefs. Her soulmate could never be a woman because it was wrong. Disgusting. The mere thought of it caused a shudder to run up her spine.
At night, as war waged on outside the rickety windows of her rickety old home, her parents would create tales for Wanda and Pietro. They would imagine the best scenarios of when the twins would gain their soulmarks.
Pietro would receive the beautiful name of a woman who would be even more breathtaking in person when they finally met. And Wanda would look upon her wrist and find the name of a handsome man who would treat her right and buy her flowers.
The twins allowed their parents' stories to follow them into their dreams as their minds created fantasy worlds where they met their soulmates and got married under the yellow sun.
It took nine years for Wanda's soulmark to appear and when it did, she broke down into tears.
It happened when she and Pietro were out playing with the other kids from their street. No one was surprised at the sight as Wanda fell to her knees, clutching her wrist in pain. Some of the other kids were older and they had gotten their marks already.
They continued to play as Pietro held his sister through the pain until, eventually, it subsided and she was able to wipe away the tears.
Then, with a smile, she turned to Pietro and rolled up her sleeve go reveal her mark...
Her smile immediately fell at the sight of the name on her wrist.
Natalia Romanova
But it couldn't be. Because that was most definitely a girl's name. Not a boy. It was impossible. Wrong. The universe was playing a cruel trick on her.
Wanda once again broke down crying, her heart beating a mile a minute, and her hands shaking as Pietro quickly tried to console her and tell her it was okay.
If she liked girls it was okay. If she wanted to find and be with her soulmate, girl or not, it was okay.
"She's crying. Why is she crying?"
"Her soulmate must be a girl."
"Ew, so she's a dyke?"
"Ha! Wanda's a dyke! Ванда любить дівчат!"
"No, I do not! I'm not a dyke, I swear! I don't like girls! я обіцяю!"
"Leave her alone!"
From that day on, Wanda felt like a weight had been settled on her shoulders. The knowledge that her soulmate was a girl.
She never told her parents the name on her wrist or that she'd even gotten her soulmark. Pietro still hadn't received his so she lied and told her parents she hadn't either.
A year later, as she was working up the courage to tell her parents that her wrist had been tainted by a girl's name, a bomb fell through their ceiling and killed her parents.
Pietro had saved her by dragging them both under their bed. They remained there for two days before someone found them and came back with help to drag them out of the rubble.
From then on, the twins' lives changed drastically. They no longer worried about the names on their wrists or who their soulmates were; no, now they focused on surviving the streets of Sokovia.
It was years before they joined HYDRA (or, as they'd believed at the time, SHIELD). Back then, it felt like they'd been given a chance to change things. To avenge their parents and destroy Tony Stark, the man behind their death.
They took the opportunity with both hands and clung to it like their lives depended on it. And sometimes, it did.
They'd been told what HYDRA had in store for them, but it hadn't prepared them for the real thing. Experiments day in and day out, torture, strenuous training that they never had the chance to recover from.
It was during this time that Wanda lost her soulmark. It was painful and bloody, and every second of it was excruciating. But by the end of it, the weight on her shoulders had lifted.
It didn't matter that left behind in its wake was there was a gruesome scar that hurt in some way to look at. When Pietro saw it, he only looked away with disappointment in his eyes.
She ended up covering the mark with wristbands and bracelets in the end.
Despite the fact that Wanda had gotten rid of her mark, she never forgot her soulmates name.
It was years later when she finally met the woman in the flesh. To begin with, she didn't know it was her because she was going by a different name - Natasha - but all it took was Wanda looking into her mind to know who she really was.
And instead of this revelation bringing elation and love, she merely felt hatred towards the woman mingled with anxiety.
Despite everything, in a strange turn of events, Wanda and Pietro ended up joining the Avengers, the team in which Wanda's soulmate was a part of.
Tony Stark was also a part of that team and though the twins still disliked him, they'd some come to know that it wasn't him who had killed their parents. He'd had no control or knowledge over any of it.
So the twins joined the Avengers and after everything was over, Ultron was dead and Novi Grad was as safe as it could be given the circumstances, they moved into the Compound.
Of course, they had no belongings to speak of and they only had each other so it was a quick move. They were shown around, given their rooms, and that was that.
It was later on when they were all in the communal area that Natasha approached the two. Wanda tensed and gripped the cup in her hand, casting her gaze to the left.
"If we're going to be on the same team, we should know each other's names," Natasha began, sitting across from the twins.
Wanda looked to Pietro with furrowed brows. She didn't know their names?
"I'm Natasha," she continued as if the duo didn't already know who she was.
"Iryna," Wanda lied, "Iryna Lytvyn."
She could practically feel the look Pietro sent her at the lie, but she didn't return it. His confusion was loud in her mind, but she wouldn't give him his answer yet.
"Pietro Lytvyn," he said.
Wanda couldn't tell whether or not Natasha believed them, but if she didn't, she didn't mention it. Instead, she gave them a small smile and rose from her seat.
"Either of you want a coffee?" She asked.
"No," Wanda said.
"Yes, please," Pietro said at the same time.
But you love coffee, he thought. Besides, how often are we going to get coffee from the Black Widow.
I do not want her coffee, Wanda replied, I prefer my tea.
She looked down at the near empty mug of green tea between her palms and pursed her lips, listening to the sounds of Natasha making herself and Pietro tea.
Wanda façade remained for weeks. She didn't tell Natasha her real name and tried to avoid being in the same room as her if possible. If she happened to be caught in the same room, she only felt hatred.
Late at night, Wanda was plagued by self-loathing and deafening thoughts. All she could think about was Natasha.
Natasha, Natasha, Natasha.
Natalia Romanova.
Her gaze would constantly fall onto her wrist where her soulmark had once resided, but had become a scar years ago. It remained covered by long sleeves or wristbands and bracelets.
She sometimes wondered if her own name was engraved on Natasha's wrist in fancy writing. If she'd kept it unlike Wanda.
Then she would frown at the thought and shake her head. Why did she care?
Pietro had noticed her odd behaviour around the Widow and badgered her unendingly until she gave in and told him what was bothering her.
Unsurprisingly, he had been trying to convince her since that she should talk to Natasha and tell her the truth. But Wanda only refused because Natasha couldn't be her soulmate. It was wrong and disgusting.
To even entertain the idea was wrong.
She was wrong.
She could see the sadness in Pietro's eyes when she told him this, and turned away because it felt similar to her own sadness, lingering behind all the self-hatred.
"You cannot run from it forever, sestra," he would tell her.
Shockingly, it took a month for anyone to accidentally alert Natasha to Wanda's lie. It had been Sam who'd ruined everything.
Natasha had been in the kitchen, smiling at a video Clint had sent her of little Nathaniel who seemed to be growing quickly, when Sam had walked in.
"Hey, Nat," he greeted her.
"Hey," Natsha replied, looking up briefly.
"Have you seen Wanda?" Sam asked her.
Natasha looked up quicker than she'd ever done so before, dropping her phone onto the counter as her hands went slack. The inside of her wrist burned like a hidden secret and, in truth, it was.
Only five people knew of the name on her wrist and they were Clint, Laura, and their kids. No one, not even Sam, knew of it.
"What?" She replied, throat dry.
"Wanda? Have you seen her? She was supposed to meet me for coffee earlier, but she didn't turn up," Sam explained.
Calming herself a little, Natasha pocketed her phone and slid off her stool to approach Sam.
"Who's Wanda?" She asked, feigning curiosity and crossing her arms. "Your girlfriend?"
"What? No. She's like a little sister to me. Besides, I have a soulmate, you know what," Sam said while pulling a face.
"So, who is she, then? This Wanda?" Natasha questioned.
By that point, Sam looked genuinely concerned.
"You know Wanda, Nat. You know, yay high," he held out a hand beside him, "thick accent, kinda grumpy sometimes. Has a twin brother called Pietro? Come on, woman, you know her."
"Her name's not Wanda," Natasha frowned, uncrossing her arms. Her heart raced in her chest, trying to escape. "Her name is Iryna..."
"Uh, no... it's Wanda," Sam said. "You feeling okay, Nat? Should I get Steve? Do you want to go to medical?"
"Wh- No, I don't need to go to medical. She told me her name was Iryna, you asshole!" Natasha snapped angrily.
Sam held up his hands in surrender.
"Okay, I can see you're upset and I really don't want to get on your bad side," he said.
"Where the hell is she?" Natasha grit out.
"That's what I want to know. We were supposed to go get coffee."
"No one cares about your stupid coffee," Natasha said as she quickly barged passed him and headed down the hall.
How could she have been so stupid? She wondered. It was so obvious she'd faked her name. The way Pietro had looked at her when she'd said Iryna should have been a clue, but she'd dismissed it.
And Wanda, if that was really her name, never wore short sleeves. If she had a soulmark, neither Natasha nor anyone else had seen it.
She was never in the same room as Natasha and had passed up the offer to train with her, opting instead to train with Steve despite their difference in height and stature. It would have been much easier to train with Natasha but Wanda didn't want to.
Natasha had tried not to be offended at the time, chalking it up to the woman being afraid of her as most people were, but it had still stung when Wanda had rejected her offer.
By the time she found Wanda, out in the courtyard with Pietro, her anger had died down a little. She had no idea what she wanted to say or how she would approach the situation, but she knew she had to do something. She couldn't just ignore it all.
She looked down at her right wrist and slowly pulled back her sleeve.
Wanda Maximoff
The name there she'd gotten a year after escaping the Red Room and she'd held close to her heart ever since, refusing to let anyone see or touch it, aside from Clint and his family. It had taken some convincing on their part.
She'd always wanted a soulmark ever since hearing about them, and had been dejected when it hadn't appeared when other's had. However, she was grateful she didn't get it during her youth because she knew those who received a soulmark in the Red Room lost it within a day.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled down her sleeve and crossed the courtyard until she met the twins under the tree they were sitting beneath. She came to a stop in front of them.
They stopped talking and Pietro looked up at her with a small smile while Wanda kept her eyes downcast.
"You know," she said before Natasha could think of what to say.
"Yeah," Natasha said though it came out more as a whisper than anything.
"Sestra? What's wrong?" Pietro quietly asked Wanda.
"Can I talk to Wanda alone?" Natasha requested of him.
A frown crossed Pietro's face before realisation dawned on him and he nodded, the smallest hint of a smile on his face. He placed one hand on Wanda's shoulder before getting up and disappearing back to the compound in a trail of blue light.
Once he was gone, Natasha turned her attention back to Wanda. She gestured at the bench Wanda was sitting on.
"May I?" She asked.
Wanda shrugged.
"Do whatever you want," she said, eyes on her fiddling hands in her lap. She twisted and turned her rings this way and that.
Nodding, Natasha stepped forward and sat down on the bench. It was a little damp in places from the rain in the early hours of that morning, but it was dry enough to sit on, if not cold.
She sighed and though she wanted to take Wanda's hand, see what it was like to lock fingers with her soulmate, she placed them in her lap instead.
"Why did you lie to me?" She began, unsure what else to say.
Wanda shrugged and kept her eyes downcast.
"There must have been a reason," Natasha said surely. "I'm your soulmate."
It felt weird to say the words aloud. For so long she had waited to say them to another person, her actual soulmate, and now she really could.
Wanda Maximoff was sitting right there in front of her.
"No, you're not," Wanda stated quickly.
Natasha's heart almost stopped.
"What?"
"You can't be."
"Why not? It's your name on my wrist, not anybody else's."
"Because," Wanda began, "it is wrong."
"I don't..." Natasha's brows furrowed with confusion.
"You are-" Wanda glanced up at her then looked away with a huff, "a woman."
Suddenly realisation fell on Natasha and she, herself, looked away. Her heart felt like it had just shattered in her chest and she wanted to die.
Because Wanda didn't think they could be soulmates. She genuinely seemed to believe it. They were both women and so she thought they couldn't be soulmates.
She looked at Wanda again and swallowed.
"Do you really believe that?" Natasha tried. "Or is that what you've been told?"
Wanda whipped her head up quickly, staring at Natasha. Her mouth fell open slightly as if preparing to say something though she closed it after a second.
"It doesn't matter," Wanda said.
"I think it does," Natasha replied quietly, "your thoughts and beliefs are your own. Nobody else's. You control what you think and feel."
Wanda didn't reply but Natasha noticed the way in which her actions became a little more forceful as she twisted her rings. Natasha wanted to reach over and take her hand if only to stop her, but didn't know if the gesture would be well-received.
So she kept her hands to herself.
"Can I see it?" She changed the subject. "Your mark?"
Again, there was no answer. Natasha began to lose hope. She bowed her head and placed her head in her hands, elbows digging into her thighs.
Then there was a quiet shuffle of fabric beside her and she lifted her head, turning it to look at Wanda again.
She watched her pull up her right sleeve and immediately, Natasha's heart shattered because there, on the inside of her wrists, was a scar. A scar covering what she knew would have once been her own name.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she nodded. It was obvious Wanda didn't want to be her soulmate and that the very idea of it sickened her. There really wasn't much she could do.
So, reluctantly, she got to her feet.
"I get it," she told Wanda. "You don't want to be my soulmate. You hate me, or at least the idea of being soulmates. I can't force you to be my soulmate or love me, or anything like that. But, I guess I'm glad I know who you are and... I'm honoured that you're my soulmate, Wanda."
She and Wanda stared at each other for a moment before Natasha coughed lightly, blinking away tears and turned around to stalk off.
...
"Natasha."
Natasha stopped, but didn't turn around. Whatever Wanda had to say, she wasn't sure she even wanted to hear it at this point.
She could feel her hopelessness and frustration all bubbling under the skin, ready to explode once she was out of sight. She would probably walk away from it all with a broken fist and slightly intoxicated.
Depending on what Wanda said next.
Natasha heard the sound of grass underfoot and turned slightly to see Wanda just over her right shoulder.
She hesitantly placed a hand on Natasha's shoulder.
"My choices are my own, yes?" Wanda whispered, hesitant and unsure.
"Of course they are, little witch," Natasha confirmed just as softly.
"Then... I think that maybe I want to give this a go. If that is all right with you?"
"I would love that," Natasha turned to fully face Wanda and slowly took her hands in her own, giving her a chance to pull away if she wanted to.
She didn't and a smile spread across Natasha's face, content.
"Do you want to get coffee?" She asked hopefully.
"I love coffee."