Welcome back for chapter three! Thanks to everyone for all the follows, favorites and reviews. You guys are awesome!
Also, you will notice that I changed my username. It's still the same person writing this story; I've just been meaning to update my name for a while. I kept the same numbers at the end to prevent confusion.
Disclaimer: see chapter 1
Enjoy the next chapter!
For the next few days, the sky opened up and poured. Wanda didn't mind; she went sightseeing in almost any weather once she'd finished her daily training. Steve insisted all the Avengers train for an hour or two every day, just for a couple of weeks, in order to hone their skills.
New York City was massive. It was even bigger than Wanda had expected it to be. It was filled with huge buildings taller than any she had ever seen in Sokovia and everyone seemed to have somewhere they needed to be. They were always hurrying from one place to the next, always with some destination in mind. They never stopped to chat, nor to meander-in fact, Wanda was almost hit by a car three times. In a way, she loved that feeling of being ignored-while she was in the city she could blend into the crowd. She could be a normal girl for a few hours. For a few short hours she had never helped to cause a war. She'd never saved the world.
Slowly, the days began to pass. Two, then three, four, and five. The other Avengers were almost all busy talking to one person or another-because apparently displacing thousands of homeless Sokovians required a bit of an explanation. However, she didn't know many people and not many people knew her, so she was able to go about her daily routine with a pleasant amount of anonymity.
Her typical day generally went like this-wake up, get coffee (Wanda was beginning to wonder how she'd ever lived without it), get dressed, go to training, take a shower, eat lunch, and hop on the computer until she found a museum or other attraction that seemed remotely interesting. She would spend the afternoon at the attraction she'd chosen to attend, be home before dark for dinner with the team, and then would either watch a movie with them or spend time in her room curled up with a book depending on everyone else's schedules.
She was surviving. However, she couldn't really say whether or not she was coping. She tried not to think about Pietro at all, dead or alive.
And yet, sometimes at night she would wake up with a fierce feeling of certainty that her brother was actually alive-that he was just on the other side of the bedroom door, waiting patiently to be let in. She would wait for him for hours sometimes, expecting at any moment to hear him say "You didn't see that coming?" And then he would tell her that the past week had been just a bad dream, and he really was still alive. He'd just pretended to be dead. It had been a practical joke a terrible one that he had taken way too far, but it was a joke all the same.
The days passed, but that door never opened-no matter how many times she willed it to.
One night, Wanda just couldn't stay asleep.
She kept waking from nightmare after nightmare, Pietro's corpse burnt into the space behind her eyelids. She awoke soaked in a cold sweat; her blankets were thrown across the bed haphazardly. The digital clock across the room blinked back at her noncommittally: 3:12 A.M.
Just a dream. But it hadn't been. Not really..
She pulled a dressing gown on over her pajamas and stepped out of bed. The tile floor felt cold beneath her feet, which was a relief compared to the stifling night outside. She was shaking too hard to even think about going back to sleep. In fact, she thought she might have been sleep crying again, an action she had found herself doing since the third night. She'd forbidden herself from crying during the day after the first night; unfortunately she couldn't always control what she did while in the throes of a dream.
Once she'd sufficiently cleaned up, Wanda headed to the kitchen on cat's paws to make herself a cup of tea. She was careful to stay silent and not wake any of the Avengers still staying in the tower. She got along fine with all of them though, now that they were all on the same team. Just a few hours earlier, she'd had a conversation with Natasha about eastern European music over a roasted chicken and slightly warm lemonade.
She waited for the tea to heat up, paging absentmindedly through a catalogue someone (probably Tony) had left lying out. Popular Mechanics, the title read.
As soon as the kettle whistled, she found a light yellow cup with a chipped rim and filled it to the brim with scalding hot tea. She couldn't help remembering a New Year's Eve sometime in her past-when Pietro had insisted on gulping down almost a full cup of hot tea even though the scalding liquid burnt his tongue and the back of his throat.
"Couldn't sleep?"
Startled, she looked up as Steve took a seat across from her and poured himself his own cup of tea. "Yeah. Guess not."
He gestured to her beverage. "Try it with a little milk. You'd be surprised how sweet it tastes."
After reluctantly adding milk, she was inclined to agree.
"So, nightmares?" Steve asked, taking another swallow of tea.
"You could say that."
"About Pietro?"
"Of course."
"You're not really as well off as you would have us believe, are you? This isn't the first nightmare." It wasn't a question.
"How do you know?"
"Everyone does-they're just too polite to say so. It's not always exactly the kind of thing you want people to speak up about, when you want to work through them on your own. Sometimes I think I hear crying in the middle of the night, and you're so tired in the morning that you need more coffee to get you up than Clint does-and when that happens, there is a serious problem."
She examined the wooden table underneath her fingertips. "I apologize. I've been working on them. They aren't as bad as they were, but they still need work-obviously-"
"You don't get it. What I want to say is that I know what you're going through." Steve cleared his throat and tapped a fingernail against the rim of his cup in a slow, monotonous rhythm. "When I was in the army during World War Two, I had a best friend. His name was Bucky Barnes-and he was like the brother I never had. We grew up together. I would have done anything for him-would have died for him in a heartbeat-and he'd have done the same for me.
"Then, one day, Bucky fell off a moving train while on a mission. It's a long story. Anyway, I thought he had died. I was convinced he had. And I grieved him as though I was grieving for a member of my own family. I've been through it all-the denial, the nightmares, and the days when all you can do is put up a brave front and hope the grief doesn't consume you. I've gone through it-and I want you to know that it does get better. I know it may be hard for you to believe right now. And I understand that, but someday you will feel normal. Things will go back to normal. And they'll never be the same, but they'll be okay again. Someday, you'll be able to move on. I promise."
They finished their drinks in silence. Wanda didn't know what to think. Mostly, she was surprised that super soldier Steve Rogers-Captain America, no less-could be hurt.
Then again, her mother had always said you learned something new every day-and of course, everyone faced their own challengers.
She put her dishes in the sink and smiled at him almost shyly. "Thank you."
He smiled as he poured another cup of artificial sweetener into his own tea. "Of course. Do you think you can back to sleep?"
"I think so. What about you?"
"I'm not really that tired. I think I'll stay up for a while. Thanks for the concern."
"Sure." She started to walk away.
"See you tomorrow in training?"
"Sounds good."
For a few hours at least, she was able to sleep without a single nightmare.
And no one seemed to care that she overslept the next morning.
Two days later, the sun finally came out again and Wanda decided to spend the nice weather walking in Central Park. Natasha had a classified mission on the Lower East side in the early afternoon, so they decided to meet up around noon and eat lunch in the park.
They packed a couple sandwiches and had a picnic on a large sun warmed rock with a beautiful view of 5th Avenue. They never ran out of things to talk about; they were united by a common culture and a similar abrupt move to the U.S. Natasha also told Wanda a lot about applying for citizenship, something she had been looking into since day one. If she was going to be an Avenger, she might as well be an American-although she was having a hard time navigating the world of green cards and visas.
Inevitably, the conversation got around to Sokovia.
"There could have been many more casualties." Natasha said carefully, well aware that she could be treading on thin ice.
"Yes-and war makes children grow up far before their time." Wanda remembered two days without food or water, when the only things that were real and solid were Pietro's arms around her and the bomb in the next room, ready to go off at any moment.
Natasha sighed. "You know, you don't have to do it alone. We've all seen loss. We've all seen war. And I guess none of us were that close with Pietro yet, but he was still one of us. He shouldn't have died, and I know how important he was to you."
"He was my everything."
"I know. All I'm saying is that you don't have to grieve alone."
Wanda rolled a small, smooth pebble carefully from hand to hand. "For years, Pietro and I had only each other. We had no one to turn to, no one to trust-"
"But times are different. You don't have to be alone anymore. You're an Avenger-and Avengers look out for each other."
It had been eleven days.
Eleven days since Wanda had lost the only person she had left.
At first, she had seen Pietro everywhere-in a jogger she passed on a street corner, in a museum docent with unusually light blond hair, in her own reflection when she combed her hair out at night.
She still saw him now, just not as often. And the disappointment was easier to take when she inevitably realized that the jogger was just a jogger or the docent was just a docent. She had realized that Pietro had made his choice-a choice for good. He'd moved on, and so should she. He would never come back, but she had to go on living, for both of them.
It was time to let go.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Clint asked as he pointed out the boat he'd rented for her. It bobbed in the outriding current, the only one on the Central Park lake this late at night. "If you want me to, I can-"
"No. I have to do this myself." Wanda cradled her red jacket almost lovingly in one arm, as though it was far more valuable than a cheap piece of clothing that was one of millions that came off a production line in China each day. And in a way it was-it was still covered in blood. She couldn't bring herself to wash it out. "I'll be back within the hour."
Clint nodded and went back to his car, which was still idling warily. Tony had offered to lend them one of his prototype self-driving cars with a built in soda machine, but he'd politely declined. Wanda was glad-after Ultron, she barely even trusted a simple computer. And she especially didn't trust anything patented with the name Stark Industries on it.
Call it a force of habit.
She turned back to the small boat and climbed in. It was a nice size-big enough for her to stretch her legs and make herself comfortable but still easy to control. She began to row toward the center of the lake, oars cutting through midnight black water. It was late; she was the only one still out this late in the night. She stopped only when she was in the exact center of the lake. The boat shifted slightly in the current and the moonlight spilled out over her like a long white cape. She almost fancied she could see Pietro's reflection watching her from the depths of the lake. It was so calm and peaceful.
She pulled a match out of the jacket pocket and began to worry it between her fingers. "I wish I could have had more time." she whispered. "I wish I could have had more time to tell you I love you, more time to calm your fears, more time to share memories. I hope you're at peace. I'm trying to let you go and I'm trying to move on-because I know that's what you would want me to do. I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I won't get to spend another day with you. You'll never go to college and get a graduate degree, the way you always talked about. I'll never be the maid of honor at your wedding. I'll never again get to save the world with you by my side.
"But I could never be more proud of you. You've done so much, more than I could ever do…and for that I thank you. Thank you for dying for something good, for dying a hero's death. It makes things hurt less, when I know that you died for a purpose, in a way most people only dream of. Thank you for waiting for me and for letting me say my goodbyes. Someday I will see you again. I firmly believe that.
"And when that day comes, we'll have a lot to talk about."
She lit the match, one little flame in a world of darkness. She touched it to the jacket, watching as the fire transferred from one object to the next and everything burned.
She dropped it all into the water, watching the jacket dissolve into ash. She could always buy another one, but it would never be the same.
Wanda's eyes were dry, which was better than she could have hoped for. Instead of sadness, she felt only peace. It made her consider, for the first time since Sokovia, even the mere possibility that things would turn out okay.
Later that night, Wanda woke in the middle of the night again. At first she thought it was because of another nightmare, but she wasn't crying.
And then she heard the commotion out in the hallway.
Immediately she thought We're under attack.
Her bedroom door flew open and Clint stood framed in the doorway, hair mussed from sleep. He raised a hand before she could say anything and began to talk haltingly, as if he couldn't really believe what he was saying. "Calm down. It's not what you think. Everyone's fine. It's just…"
"Just what?" Her heart thrummed like a nervous animal's.
"It's Pietro. He's woken up. And he seems to be very much alive."
See? I told you things would get better! I just couldn't leave Pietro dead…
As a side note, I've also decided not to have any pairings in this story because I'd like to focus on the relationship between the twins and how they're adjusting to all the new changes in their lives.
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