Prompt: Bolvangar Burning.

Summary: Wanda may be a witch, and thus to stay with her mother, and Pietro distinctly not and sent to their father, but they are twins, twins to the core of themselves, and when they were told to be apart their daemons had become snakes and coiled so closely around each other they could not be separated, even by the clever claws of their mother's cormorant or the clever fingers of their father's marten.

Notes: Daemons/HDM AU.

Warnings: Codependency.

i.
Wanda may be a witch, and thus to stay with her mother, and Pietro distinctly not and sent to their father, but they are twins, twins to the core of themselves, and when they were told to be apart their daemons had become snakes and coiled so closely around each other they could not be separated, even by the clever claws of their mother's cormorant or the clever fingers of their father's marten.

Magda sighed and looked to Magnus. "You will take care of them both?" she asked and he nodded. She pressed a kiss, cold like snow, and as gentle as, to Magnus' cheek and to theirs. "I will come for them next winter, to see them again," she had promised, and she had flown away.

Wanda's hands and Pietro's had stayed clasped, and when their daemons had untangled themselves and returned to them, even they had been uncertain for a moment as to who's was who's.

ii.
Their parents, father and mother both, had found their closeness odd. Estrie did not mind leaving Pietro's side for Wanda's and Pheletes did not mind leaving Wanda's side for Pietro's. The twins were never far apart enough for it to hurt their daemons, but it unsettled them all the same, to see Estrie coiling as a snake around Wanda's neck, or Pheletes as a bird settled on Pietro's shoulder.

Love the stories said. When one touches a daemon not one's own all involved should be repulsed, unless it is a gesture of love.

The twins were never repulsed.

iii.
Magda rarely took them north. Wanda was a witch, she acknowledged, and should join her clan, but she could not go north with Pietro too, so she had to remain south. Magda had taught her all the same, taught her what magics she could, and gifted her a branch of cloud-pine when she turned eight.

Wanda had spent days trying to find ways to carry Pietro too, once she had learned to use the branch to fly.

iv.
They had been ten when Magda had arrived, and invited them all North. A celebration, she had said, humans loved by witches might come, and the sons of witches, and daughters who had chosen to live far from their clans. Magnus could not, busy as he was with work, but the twins could, and Pietro had been carried between mother and sister flying by cloud-pine branch.

v.
The first sign their mother had been shot was Kanerva's screech. She wheeled and curved and Magda was falling, and for all the size of Kanerva's claws she could not hold their mother up. The last they saw of her was falling dark clothes, falling dark branch, and the bleak black of a cormorant's wings against their mother's silhouette, fading into Dust.

vi.
Wanda carries them down, holding as tightly as she could to Pietro's arm. Estrie is an ermine around his neck, and Pheletes became an eagle, as big as he and Wanda could imagine, and his claws hold tight around Pietro's other wrist. The snow is a vast expanse around them, and cold, bitterly cold to Pietro's human skin. Wanda passes her cloak to him, Pheletes became a leopard and curls around him, and Wanda looks towards where their mother had fallen.

vii.
"What do we do now?" Pietro's voice is small, smaller than Wanda had ever heard it, and she looks up from breathing warm air over his hands.

Wanda's voice is smaller still as she admits, "I don't know."

viii.
Wanda does not know what to make of the men that found them, but she does not like it one bit. To find them so soon after their mother shot down… she could not like that nearness, nor what it could mean.

"Come with us," they offer. "To Bolvangar. You will be safe there, and warm, and we have food aplenty."

Estrie scurries from Pietro's arm to Wanda's, tiny claws of a tiny mouse, to whisper, "We will stay with you." Wanda shakes her head.

"Go with them," she says to Pietro. "I will find mother's clan, and let them know."

"But-" Pietro says, and Wanda knows it is but a token refusal by the way Estrie is already scurrying back to him.

"Go," Wanda repeats, gentle as she can be, and Pheletes nuzzles a farewell to Estrie and rubs one last time against Pietro's side. "I will join you at Bolvangar when mother's clan knows."

Pietro nods, and hugs her tightly before he goes. "I will wait," he says. "Until you come back."

"And I," Estrie whispers, still a mouse by Pietro's ear, "Shall keep him from trouble."

ix.
Wanda travels as best she can, as fast as she can, towards the clan she knows to fly at Lake Enara. Mother's clan, she thinks. My clan. Serafina Pekkala will help us.

She she flies as fast as she can, through wind and snow, until she comes to waste and Pheletes' screech calls her up short.

"I cannot!" he cries and Wanda turns her branch to face him. "I cannot go this way." Wanda does not think she has ever seen a hawk's face so sad.

"It's the barren land," Wanda realises. "As mother told us."

The snowfield was empty, but for yellow grass poking up, and grey stones here and there. It looks like the rest of the land they have flown over, and Wanda is almost certain the witches of Lake Enara are near.

"I think," she whispers, "This is the fastest way."

"Do not," Pheletes begs, "Do not do this, do not part us. We are already far from our twins, do not-"

But Wanda is already flying, as fast as she can, as far as she can, and doing all she can to ignore the tearing ache as Pheletes becomes farther and farther away.

x.
She lands at the camp of the witches of Lake Enara and feels as though her bones are burning. Pheletes has not come to her, though she knows he can find her now. She tries to land gracefully, as mother always had, but stumbles, and lands, knees and hands in the snow, at the edge of the camp. One of the women, carrying a basket of plants, spots her.

"A child," she murmurs, and looks to the bird on her shoulder. "Simo," she asks, "Get Pekkala. There is a child here, with no daemon and no mother."

xi.
Wanda is carried to the tent in the centre of it all by the woman, and wrapped in a fur. "You are not human," the woman says as she goes, "But you can still feel the cold. What were you thinking travelling without at least a cloak?"

"I had one," Wanda murmurs. "I gave it to my brother."

xii.
Serafina Pekkala is a pretty woman, Wanda thinks, and there is a kind of severe kindness to her face. Her hands gently capture Wanda's, rub warmth into them as she had tried to do for Pietro.

"What happened child?" she asks, and it is in the language mother spoke to her and Pietro and only her and Pietro. "Where is your mother?"

Wanda points back whence she came. "She was shot," she says. "Kanerva couldn't stop her from falling. We saw her turn to Dust."

Pekkala's voice is still gentle. "Who? Your daemon?"

"And my brother, and his daemon." Wanda is no longer trembling, is no longer tired, and for all her bones still ache she is hungry more than hurting.

"Where is he now? With your father?" Wanda shakes her head. "And your daemon?"

"There was an expanse," Wanda says. "Pheletes couldn't cross it."

Pekkala mutters something, quiet so Wanda does not hear, to the snow goose at her side, and the daemon waddles out. Wanda can hear the flap of its wings outside the tent.

"Tell me," Pekkala asks, voice soft as ever. "Where is your brother now?"

xiii.
Wanda cannot believe the witches already mean to go to Bolvangar, until they tell her why. Tearing people apart from themselves, Wanda thinks, tearing childrenfrom themselves. Wanda asks for her cloud-pine back, and to join them.

"You are welcome to," Pekkala says. "But when we get there you must be careful."

xiv.
To fly with the clan is a kind of beauty Wanda can only compare to flying with mother and Pietro. They fly fast, the witches singing something that makes the winds speed them on their way, farther and farther from the settlement at the lake, and closer and closer to Bolvangar.

"What are we going to do?" she asks the witch-queen and Pekkala merely nods towards the building in the snow.

"For now? For now we wait."

xv.
Wanda is not sure how long she has waited - she later learns it was only an hour - before she flies closer to the queen and tugs her sleeve. "My brother," she says. "He said he would stay until I came for him. May I go to tell him?"

The green eyes of the witch-queen have some odd quality, Wanda thinks, to reflect the light quite as they do, but eventually she bows her head in a nod. "Keep the fur," she says, "And hide your branch with us. Do not tell them your Pheletes is away, tell them he is hiding in your clothes."

Wanda nods, and promises.

xvi.
They do not take her to Pietro when they let her in and Wanda thinks that is the first warning. "My brother," she insists. "He came here days ago, his name is Pietro." The woman shakes her head, the guard shakes his, and Wanda tries to find the trick their mother had tried to teach her, to become innocuous.

It takes her an hour before she slips away.

xvii.
The corridors are coiling, twisting things, but eventually Wanda finds a room where there are other children. She tugs one close, forces the spell of her hiding to stretch over them too and asks, "Where is my brother?" The child shrugs and points vaguely out of the door, and Wanda tries not to grind her teeth.

xviii.
Some of the doors are locked and Wanda does not know the trick mother had used to open their bedroom windows to take her and Pietro flying. Door and door and door and door, and all alike, and Wanda hates this.

She almost slaps Pheletes when he buzzes up to her ear in the form of a fly.

xix.
"How did you get here?" she asks, and Pheletes becomes a snake around her neck to speak clearly.

"Kaisa found me. The snow goose. He said you needed to find our twins." It is plain, Wanda thinks, from what he says, that no matter his grudge against her for hurting him, Pietro and Estrie come even before that.

Wanda sighs with relief, and runs her hand over the soft scales of her daemon's head. "Do you know where they are?"

"This way," Pheletes says, and becomes a fly again, darting down the hall.

xx.
Wanda does not quite recall what happened when they find their twins. There was a guillotine, she knows, and Pietro screaming and Estrie crying out and Wanda saw nothing but red as Pheletes became a dragon to tear the cage apart.

Wanda thinks there is a magic of anger, and that is why their mother had taught her self-control at five rather than at Pietro's six. The room, she knows, is ruined, but does not care with Pietro in her arms, Estrie by her ear, Pheletes perched on her brother's shoulder.

"We have to get out," she whispers. "Pekkala is here for all of the children, all of mother's clan. Bolvangar is to be destroyed."

Pietro nods, just as the siren goes off.

xxi.
They emerge to chaos, and children already following a girl out. Wanda waves to the witches, catches her cloud-pine, and pulls her brother into the skies.

"Stay high up," Pekkala whispers, flying past. "Let us fight this fight."

Estrie's claws dig into Pietro's collar to hold him up, Pheletes holds his wrist and Wanda holds his hand, and together the four watch as Bolvangar and its soldiers made ruin.

xxii.
Years upon years later she and Pietro still meet. Wanda is not sure why he does not age as other humans do, but she is grateful for it, even if it is born of Bolvangar trying to tear him and Estrie apart. Estrie still tries to race Pheletes, and though she is faster, he can go farther. Wanda and Pietro watch them from her cloud-pine branch, peregrine falcon racing red-tailed hawk, and feel almost children again.

End Notes: Reviews are much appreciated!