You guys are all amazing! Thank you so much for all the support. I'm having so much fun writing this story. I'm so glad you enjoy reading it! :)

Note: In this story, Dr. Cho is still alive. I assume she died in AOU, but for the purposes of plot, she survived the events of the movie.

Disclaimer: See chapter 1

Pietro is alive.

Wanda was moving before the archer's words had fully registered. She practically flew into the main lounge, where all meals and movies usually took place. At this time of night, the room was devoid of any food and/or popcorn. The other members of the team were scattered around the edges of the room in various stages of awareness-except for Vision, who seemed not to need sleep-along with Doctor Helen Cho and Nick Fury. And then there was…

Pietro.

Wanda pinched herself so hard her skin bruised. This had to be a dream-and she wanted to wake up. She wanted to minimize the pain she would feel when she eventually realized that this was just another vision her mind conjured up so she could rest easily at night. None of this was real. It couldn't be real. The heart monitor had flat lined. She'd heard it. She still heard it, on nights when the tower got too quiet. She stopped in the center of the room, unable to take another step.

The person who looked like her brother was watching her curiously. "Wanda." he said in a near whisper.

"Who are you?" she replied. He couldn't be Pietro. Pietro had died in the Battle of Sokovia. He'd died a hero-but he'd died just the same.

"Pietro. It's me. It's really me. I swear it is."

"I saw you die."

"Dr. Cho put me in experimental surgery. She managed to regrow all the tissue I'd lost, replenish all the spilled blood, and eventually shock my heart enough to get it to start beating again. After that everything else came back, but slowly. There's a very long and scientific explanation as to how it all works, but I don't really understand it myself." He cocked his head like a puppy waiting for a handout. "You didn't see that coming."

"Getting old, kid. Getting really old." Clint groaned from across the room, even as he smiled ruefully.

In about three seconds flat, Wanda was in her brother's arms, hugging him so tightly she doubted he could breathe properly. But for once she didn't care because he felt so real. So strong, solid, and…right. She brushed a hand across his chest, fingers playing over the places where his abdomen had been ripped apart by bullets. His wounds, which had seemed so fatal at the time, were just a dim and distant memory. There was barely even scar tissue to mark where they had been. "I thought you were dead."

"So did I-but now I'm back. And don't worry-I'm not going anywhere anytime soon." Even so, Wanda was still thinking That's what you said last time.

Tony cleared his throat, still looking more than a little confused. "All right! Well, this is great news! Now, who's up for eggs and waffles?"

Although it was only just after five in the morning, everyone was up for the day. After all, resurrections weren't something that happened every day.

Pietro slipped his hand into hers as they walked to the kitchen and Wanda was surprised by how normal it all felt.

She hadn't realized just how much she had missed his touch.

"Are you sure that what you brought back is one hundred percent the kid and not some weird ghost thing that's secretly planning to murder us all?"

Pietro knew what they said about him behind his back. No one could believe that the surgery had actually worked-in a way, neither could he.

He gently coaxed Wanda to eat another piece of toast. She wasn't eating much-she just sipped from her coffee cup and fiddled with his hair. It was all over the place, and of course she took it upon herself to smooth it back and make sure he looked presentable. He didn't mind-in fact, it was a relief to feel her warmth instead of the…cold.

Just after he closed his eyes for the last time, when he'd stopped feeling the touch of Wanda's hand in his own, he'd found himself wandering the streets of Sokovia. Not war torn Sokovia, but the Sokovia he remembered-filled with lush parks, pristine lakes, beautiful flowers, and laughing children.

He'd made his way to his old home. It was still there, right where it had been before the shelling started; proud, erect, and untouched. His parents stood on its doorstep, smiling at him and ready to welcome him home. He wanted to go with them; in fact, he was just about to enter his mother's loving embrace for the first time in almost a decade when it was all ripped away from him. Thinking back on it later, he figured that must have been around the time his heart started to beat again.

He'd been in darkness for a long time while his body had slowly repaired itself-shapeless, formless darkness where all he could do was think and wonder about the outcome of the battle. Had the transport been attacked on its way to New York? Was Wanda all right? He had no way of knowing-and not being able to move drove him crazy.

It had never quite occurred to him that he had died. Death was a thing that happened to other people, not to him. He moved too fast-too fast for the world, too fast for time, and certainly too fast for death.

Finally, he'd woken up more confused than he'd been in a very long time. He'd thought about Wanda through all the preliminary tests, when they asked him question after question to make him prove that he really was Pietro Maximoff-the first of his kind to die and live to tell about it.

After what seemed like too long a time period, he'd been brought here. And the first time he'd seen Wanda, the first time he'd held her in his arms again, he knew that it had all been worth it. Every single minute of it.

"So, what have you been up to?" he asked, spearing another piece of bacon. His superfast metabolism was working faster than ever since he hadn't had anything to eat in almost two weeks.

"Explored New York City. It's amazing, Pietro-there are so many buildings and so many people. It's so much bigger than Sokovia."

"Someday we'll have to go see a museum or something like that."

"Yeah. I guess we will." For the first time she could consider going to see the Statue of Liberty with her brother, or driving around Central Park in one of those hansom cabs. It could be a reality now-and a world of possibilities had just opened up to her.

"This deserves a celebration." Steve said from the head of the table. "Tonight, let's go for shawarma." All the other Avengers applauded loudly.

Pietro didn't really care where they went to eat. He felt he'd been given a second chance at life-and he was determined to make it count.

That night, Wanda had another nightmare.

It was different from the others she'd had in the past. In this one, HYDRA attacked the tower and she and her brother were caught in the crossfire. She was only able to watch as the bullets pierced Pietro's chest…one, two, three, four, five, six…

She didn't realize she'd been crying until Pietro shook her awake. "What's wrong?" he asked, sitting on the edge of her bed. It was just like it had been at the children's homes they'd practically grown up in-when the nightmares came, he was always there to comfort her.

And they'd both had a lot of nightmares.

It took a moment for her to realize where she was-in her bedroom in the unharmed Avengers Tower, with her brother at her side. "Pietro." she whispered. She had to say it; had to hear him respond.

"I'm right here." he replied. "You cried out."

"Just a nightmare. I have had a lot of them lately."

"You should not have to."

They lapsed into silence for a while, watching the city that never sleeps go by below them. It shone and glittered as a million people with a million different lives and a million different places to be moved from one place to another; steadfast and unchanging.

"Can I ask you something?" she asked.

Pietro turned away from the window, one eyebrow raised curiously. "Anything."

"When you…got shot…did you really die?"

He looked away, eyes veiled. His fingers tapped a nervous tattoo on the white bedspread. "I think so. I saw things I can't truly explain-unless I had an out-of-body experience or something like that."

"What did you see?"

"Our parents. Our home in Sokovia as it used to be-tall redbrick houses, children playing hopscotch on the sidewalks, and the scent of Mama's fresh biscuits floating through an open window on a light breeze. I felt like we could be happy again; that things could go back to the way they were before. It was…amazing."

"Do you wish you were still there?"

He considered the prospect for a moment, but ultimately shook his head firmly. "No. My place is here, with you. Someday, when we go into the Great Beyond or whatever that was…we'll go together, as brother and sister. I won't leave you behind again."

"Good." She gently touched his chest, to feel his heartbeat under her fingertips. It was strong and steady. It definitely belonged in the realm of the living.

She fell asleep hearing that same heartbeat running through her head, like a broken record that kept getting stuck in the same spot every time she replayed it. But unlike a broken record, the heartbeat didn't bother her at all.

Something was different about Wanda.

Before Sokovia had gone flying, Pietro had been fond of pranking his sister. He loved finding little ways to push her buttons and annoy her-sometimes even to the point where she would shoot a few (relatively) harmless hexes at him. It had always been a game between them-he would hide the TV remote, use up what little Wi-Fi they had, and sing opera in the shower so loudly and obnoxiously that he was sure the entire government would be able to hear him. Then Wanda would yell at him and/or threaten to take away the pair of Beats he'd stolen from an Apple store a couple years previously (which was still his most prized possession)-or, in the days after they'd gotten their powers, just hex him a few times. If she could catch him, that is.

Once, when he'd been singing in the shower loud enough to wake the dead, she'd pretended to be the Sokovian Secret Police and had almost knocked down the bathroom door. Pietro still maintained that the reason he had screamed that loudly was because he'd had an untimely voice crack. He hadn't been startled, of course.

Now, everything had changed. Wanda had changed. She barely smiled and laughed even less. She didn't show much emotion and she had nightmares every other night, though Pietro knew she didn't always tell him when they occurred. Every time he tried to get a ruse out of her, he was met with a demeanor like a mountain lake-cool, controlled, and-if he didn't know better-indifferent.

When he purposefully spent too much time taking a bath and used up all the hot water, she didn't even scold him. She just took a cold shower without complaint.

When he stole food from her plate at meal times, she didn't move to stop him.

When he hid the TV remote, she simply searched until she found it.

During training she was like a machine-almost robotic in the way she destroyed this and zapped that. It was almost as though Baron Von Strucker was still whispering in her ear, telling her what to do. Pietro kept trying to get her to laugh, or at the very least smile, but it was an almost impossible task.

Finally, he stopped Clint in the hallway one night after dinner. "Hey, do you think there is something…off about Wanda?"

Clint looked at him curiously. "Off how?"

"She's…cold. She never smiles, never laughs, and never shows any kind of emotion."

"When you were gone she stifled her feelings-all that grief and pain she must have been feeling after you died." Clint was glaring at him now, as though that was supposed to be his fault. "I can't imagine how much she has to readjust completely now that you're back from the dead-literally. Give her some time. She'll come around."

Of course, that just made Pietro want to try harder to make her happy and to make up for the twelve eternally long days he'd been gone. He took her to Broadway shows two nights a week, bought her nice things (including a particularly expensive diamond necklace from a store called Tiffany's) and even took her for midnight walks in Central Park. Nothing he did made the slightest bit of difference. Wanda remained withdrawn and closed, a shell of her former self.

Pietro was determined to break her out.

Wanda was back in the HYDRA base in Sokovia, from the days of tests, injections, and experimental drugs every other day.

The Baron paced the hallway outside her cell. This vaguely confused her, as she was nearly one hundred percent sure he had died in the attack on the base some time ago. It occurred to her that she had to be dreaming. She would have woken up immediately had the scientist not started talking. "It is nice to have Pietro back, isn't it?" he asked in a thick accent.

She nodded guardedly.

"Enjoy it while you can."

"What?" Pietro was back-and he was here to stay.

He'd promised her he wouldn't leave her again.

"He can't stay forever, you know. You saw him die. You weren't there to save him. You shouldn't have protected him like you should have. Decisions like that have repercussions. Sooner or later he will leave you again-and this time his forever will be permanent."

"Be quiet." Wanda replied. "Pietro is alive. And he's going to stay that way."

"I guess we'll have to see, won't we?"

And then Wanda woke up, completely alone and perfectly safe but still haunted by the dream. Both Dr. Cho and her brother had told her that Pietro was fine. They had said the surgery worked, and it was just as though he had never taken those bullets in the first place.

But what if he wasn't as alright as he seemed? What if there were other complications he didn't know about-complications no one knew about, even Dr. Cho?

She didn't know if she could bear the pain of losing him again.

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