Prompt: I would follow you anywhere.

Summary: Wanda had found the notes and the records, when peeling through the layers of someone's mind (globules of colour, purple as a mangostine, orange as a tangerine, brightly changing like watermelon, until she came to the sickly-pale globules of truth). She had found that Tony Stark was dangerous, yes. That he was powerful, yes.

But also that he was ignorant, and that he had been betrayed by a trusted friend.

He had not quite sold the weapon that killed their parents.

Notes: N/A

Warnings: Codependency

i.
The day they step away from the ones who have taught them and trained them the sky is blue and the trees coated in silver. With Pietro's colours around them they flee the castle with all of Pietro's speed. Wanda had found the notes and the records, when peeling through the layers of someone's mind (globules of colour, purple as a mangostine, orange as a tangerine, brightly changing like watermelon, until she came to the sickly-pale globules of truth). She had found that Tony Stark was dangerous, yes. That he was powerful, yes.

But also that he was ignorant, and that he had been betrayed by a trusted friend.

He had not quite sold the weapon that killed their parents.

Pietro was not pleased when Wanda told him. Vengeance was simple. Vengeance was understandable. Vengeance worked and allowed for swift strikes well suited to his new gift. But in this, Stark, the most hated Stark, was innocent, and the one who was guilty, one Obadiah Stane, was dead. They had no reason to stay with those who might allow them to fight against an innocent man. Wanda's scarlet danced them free, and Pietro's coursing silver brought them back to the city.

ii.
The city is not quite as they remembered it. The world had changed while they had been cloistered away. Wanda decides they should go south, and as ever, Pietro follows. The world has changed, they realise, not just the city. Stories only gradually filtered to them in the castle have full blown mythologies outside it, and Wanda delights in taking them apart and piecing them back together.

Pietro, Wanda knows, will follow where she goes now, with his speed and his strength all tied into the eternal dance he had made of his mind, all anchored around Protect her. Sometimes Wanda fears her scarlet has bound him more strongly to her, and then he does something, something entirely himself, and knows her scarlet could never make him other than he was. Pietro will follow her because he is her brother, and nothing is more important to him than her safety and their vengeance.

iii.
They travel. Time bleeds together. They do not travel far, but it feels like they do. For twins who had never left Sokovia going to Germany or Austria or Hungary, so close as they may be, feels like going far. They return, ever, to Sokovia, and bed down in the church in the centre of the city. They will have no home, not just yet, but they have a place of safety.

iv.
The riots worsen. Sometimes soldiers tear through the streets, and it is all Wanda can do not to step out with her scarlet and stop them from scaring the people. Sometimes it is Pietro she must stop, stop before they reveal where they hide to those they hide from.

They have no wish to return to the grasp of what they now know to be HYDRA.

(They had not been to a synagogue in years, they no longer Believed, but Nazis were Nazis and their uncaringness of all who had died in that castle made Wanda want to burn)

v.
The city tore free and Wanda did all she could to find her feet.

"Pietro?"

Here. His voice is a whisper, a tendril of thought down the bridge they share, and he is running through the city, learning what is happening. Avengers, he sends, and an image of them.

Wanda pauses. She hates Stark still. It was his weapon that had killed their parents, his lack of attention that had sold it but… but he had not sold it, had not meant to sell it, and was here, presumably enough, to stop this.

We help them, she sends, and Pietro is there in a moment to carry her to them.

vi.
Wanda does not know how to explain to them who they are or what they can do, and sends scarlet memories to fill them in.

"We're helping," she says, recalling the right words, the English grammar. "This is our city. We will protect it."

The one dressed in a flag nods, the ones dressed in black pause, and the two inhuman creatures, one maroon and magenta and one in armour, seem considering.

"What can we do?"

vii.
The city is rising and Wanda does not know how long they can breathe in the ever-thinning air. Back at the epicentre - beneath the castle - Stark is trying to reverse what has happened, but here, amongst the damaged city, with strange robots, like Stark's but not, flying and shooting at all they could see, all they can do is try to get people off the rock.

The rock flies higher, and Wanda watches the world shrink away.

"It's beautiful, in a way," Pietro says, pausing behind her. "But horrifying. This shouldn't be possible."

Wanda's laugh is little more than a tired exhalation. "We shouldn't be possible," she says, "But we are. The world is turning terrible, brother-mine."

"The world can turn however it wants," Pietro says. "We will always have each other."

Wanda does smile at that. "Yes. Shall we stay then? In this terrible world made of horrifying and beautiful?"

Pietro watches a robot disintegrate in the yellow beam of the maroon creature and nods. "Until it supersedes the horror you create, and the beauty you offer."

Wanda takes his offered hand. "To the fight then," she says, "And the Avengers."

End Notes: Reviews are much appreciated!