Prompt: Stubbornness

Summary: Wanda punches his shoulder and he is half-certain she has used her scarlet to add to the force of it as he stumbles back. "Youidiot!" she says, in Sokovian, and it is not quite a scream apart from the anger curling out in scarlet around her face. "Why would you do that? How could you do that? You could have healed wrong!"

Notes: Pietro Lives AU

Warnings: Codependency.

i.
Wanda does not notice her brother's leg at first, because the pain, while there, is enough for Pietro to ignore, and therefore not where she would notice it in his mind. He limps, on occasion, but is quick enough to hide it or cover for it, or simply claim he slipped.

(He almost never slips, but after the Battle he had been quaking all over the place, and Wanda was not surprised that he was clumsy.)

It turns out, Wanda learns, to have begun almost a week ago.

ii.
Pietro does not particularly like the Avengers. Some of them are alright - the guy with the bow is fun to tease, but he's not always around, and the guy with a shield is pretty decent but also too serious - but the one in armour reminds him too much of Stark, and the Vision is simply inhuman.

Still, he is not inclined to take an insult lying down, and being called old for his limp, even in jest, leads to a middle finger waved in their general direction while he gets used to feet again.

(He had spent several minutes dead and several hours in a Cradle after all. Captain Rogers called it Sea-Legs.)

"Ooold," Clint calls from the doorway, and only grins at Pietro's gesture. "You're even going grey!"

"Fuck you!" Pietro calls, "You try walking when you died!"

Then he careens into a wall so hard he almost dislocates his hip.

iii.
Pietro assures them all that he's fine - he is, for the most part, and where he isn't he'll heal in a matter of hours anyway - and goes to sit with Wanda.

It's easy to be still with his sister, not least because her scarlet can twist into his mind and around his legs and make sure he doesn't go speeding off without meaning to. He is always grateful for that, that it takes only a twisted fingertip from Wanda for his shakes to still, for him to be calm long enough to regain what control he had lost in healing. His hip still aches, but it's a dull ache and when Wanda asks he promises it will be fine.

iv.
"Want to run?" Clint asks, a few days later, and Pietro's not sure why his hip is still not entirely healed and is dying to be allowed to sprint. Pietro is up and standing by the door in the time it takes Clint to blink.

"Old man," he says, and grins before sprinting outside.

The air outside is fresh and clean and though its not exactly the same as the crisp pine of the woods outside the castle it is recognisably free and Pietro rocks from side to side stretching while he waits for Clint to catch up. His hip twinges, and when he touches his leg he can just about feel the slow-healing scar beneath his tracksuit. Maybe, he thinks, he had needed more time in the Cradle, but he had been going mad cooped up in the coffin-like thing.

Claustrophobia is to be expected when you've had a building collapse on you.

"Alright?" Clint calls, jogging over, bow in hand.

"Leg," Pietro says. "'s healing slower than it should."

Clint frowns. "Do you usually heal as fast as you run?"

"About," Pietro says, and shifts his feet. "Race?"

Clint laughs. "You'd beat me. No. Potshots?"

Pietro looks at the bow disbelievingly. "With that?"

"Won't know if we don't try," Clint says, grinning, and lifts it, drawing the string back. "Go on."

Pietro runs.

v.
His limp does slow him, somewhat, he has to be careful where he puts his foot, and takes to leaping from his toes to land on his uninjured leg, altering his stride to something momentarily baffling. He almost collides with a tree, and then found his balance. The world was speeding by, his leg aching but only slightly and -arrow.

Pietro swings his head back, catches the arrow, sees the explosive tip and throws it back towards Clint.

"Cheat!" he calls, but he knows he is going too fast to be heard. Times like this he wishes Wanda was around, able to send scarlet messages between minds, but she probably wouldn't approve of him running with a limp.

vi.
Wanda most certainly would not have approved, had she known, but at that moment she was sitting with Vision, taking advantage of the android's patience and fluency with languages to improve her English. Sometimes, though, learning would pause, such as now.

"Your brother," Vision says, and Wanda is ready for the various things she has already heard from the other Avengers (Tony's Flowers in the Atticcomment was the least of them). "Are you sure he is well enough to train?"

Wanda relaxes and shrugs. "He says he is," she says. "And he knows I would be disappointed if he lied."

"And - forgive me - but your disappointment would be enough to stop him?"

Wanda knows that, from anyone else, this would be a pointed remark, a question of their bond, a judgement, but from Vision it is simply a question. "There are a few things," Wanda says, "Pietro will never do. Hurting me is one of them."

Vision looks like he might say something else - for a moment she can see the word thoughtless floating through the banks of neurons that make up his mind alongside an image of her brother - but he simply smiles slightly and nods. "Shall we continue?"

vii.
Training, Pietro thinks, went pretty well. Even with Clint's potshots he'd found his stride again, and dodging the arrows or catching them had provided an extra challenge. His hip aches, and he considers getting an aspirin or a compress but settles for finding Wanda, and sitting quietly by, eyes half closed, as she practices English with the android.

viii.
It is not until a skirmish with HYDRA-Police, a week later, that Wanda finds out. She knows that Pietro had been training, only resting when asleep or when sitting with her, knows about the potshot runs, about Rogers testing Pietro's ability to predict movements with random hurling of his shield, Natasha testing his ability to climb and sneak even at high speed.

She did not know about the limp until a bullet rips through Pietro's thigh and all she sees is red.

"Well," Clint says later as they're patching up her brother. "You'll limp with both legs now - balanced, eh?"

Pietro's eyes dart to hers, and Wanda knows hers are filling with scarlet. "What," she says, slowly and in Sokovian, "does he mean?" Pietro looks sheepish and Wanda lets scarlet curl around her fingers, rise and climb its way up her arms. "Do not make me go into your mind."

"My leg," Pietro says, in English, and taps at his off leg. "It is healing slowly."

Wanda summons up her English. "I would like," she says, and tries to pull her scarlet back, "to speak with my brother alone."

ix.
Wanda punches his shoulder and he is half-certain she has used her scarlet to add to the force of it as he stumbles back into the bed he was supposed to still be sitting on. "You idiot!" she says, in Sokovian, and it is not quite a scream apart from the anger curling out in scarlet around her face. "Why would you do that? How could you do that? You could have healed wrong!"

There, Pietro has to admit, Wanda may have a point.

"You need your legs to run, why would you damage one by not letting it heal? What were you thinking?!"

Pietro has to admit that he may not have been thinking.

Wanda sighs, scrubs a hand over her face. "What were you thinking?" she asks again, and Pietro has to tug his fingers back from tugging at the rapidly-healing new bullet hole in his thigh. That, at least, is healing at his usual accelerated rate.

"I wasn't," he admits, using Sokovian to try to soothe Wanda. "I was just sick of being cooped up."

Wanda's face rests on her hand, her elbow in her other hand, arm braced across her stomach. "Why didn't you tell me? Or Doctor Cho? Or anyone?"

Pietro looks sheepish again. He doesn't really have a reason, beyond thoughtlessness, and evidently Wanda picks up on that thought because she is huffing out a breath as he thinks it.

"Vision was right," she says. "You really are thoughtless, sometimes."

"Hey-" Pietro starts.

"Vision was right, and he is barely a month old."

Again, Pietro has to admit his sister may have a point.

Wanda finally sits, right beside the bed Pietro has been forced to take and grasps his hand. Her knuckles are pale even through the scarlet dancing around them, even in the glowing light from her eyes. "Promise me," she says, voice soft. "Promise me you will tell me if you are hurt again." Her thumb grazes over his knuckles. "You always know when I am hurt, but you bury yours. Tell me," she repeats, and Pietro lifts their joined hands and kisses her knuckles.

"I promise," he says, and lets a smile curl the edges of his lips. "But only if you stop dancing around the android. You don't have to use English as an excuse, and soon it will be a poor one."

Wanda slaps his arm at that, but she is smiling and Pietro considers that a win.

End Notes: Reviews are much appreciated!