Chapter 2
The day Andrej agrees to it, and sits in medical waiting for the injection, Wanda is sat on the bed opposite him, feeling like a coiled spring. She had seen Pietro's mind like this, stressed, worried, waiting for action, wanting desperately to move, rather than worry in stillness, but she'd not experienced it fully herself. Scarlet dances around her, knots through her hair, and her eyes glow with it. As Andrej lies down on the bed, as the virus goes into him, he reaches his free hand to Wanda.
When she moves close to him his fingers tangle in her hair. "You'll stay?" he asks, Sokovian, low and quiet. "Witch's honour?"
Wanda knows the scarlet is in her eyes, and almost wishes it were the honest silver-blue of Pietro's. "Witch's honour," she breathes. "I will stay."
It is three days, and she does not leave his side unless she must. The fourth day Vision comes by, complaining of something he does not understand.
"My head, it... hurts, I think. I've not experienced this before."
Wanda smiles. "A headache. Dr. Cho said she left some medicines in the cupboard, that should work on your body."
Vision crosses to the cabinet, and finds the curious purple-green pills designed to soothe the pain of vibranium-laced muscles and skin and tissue. He swallows them quickly, with the aid of water, his mouth turning down slightly at the odd motion he'd not had to do before. Then he sits by Wanda, on the bed across from where Andrej is sleeping. He has been feverish these past few days, but eats when he is given food. Wanda cannot feel his ribs when she hugs him goodnight.
They are silent awhile.
"Do you think he will make it?"
"I hope he does." Wanda's voice is a breath. "Half died in the first three days, I think. He has done better than half."
"How long was the fever for you?"
Wanda shrugs a shoulder. "For me, five days. For him, nine." The tone in her voice tells Vision who the him is. Wanda still cannot say his name without choking, and has been trying workarounds. Sam offered to help her find a therapist, find someone to talk to, but Wanda knows she would not be able to explain this to anyone.
There is silence in the room from them. The lights hum, the air-con softly breathes, the heart-monitor hooked up to Andrej marks his pulse. These, and the muted sound of Andrej's chest rising and falling is all there is. Vision does not move, seeming to revel in the quiet.
"Will you stay for a while?" Wanda's question disturbs the silence, but Vision nods. "Do you mind staying?" and Wanda's question is almost an afterthought.
"I do not mind." The android's voice is soft and warm. "The, ah, headache was getting less the closer I came to here. I think the virus may still be linked to…," he trails off, and gestures to the stone on his brow.
Wanda nods. "That makes sense. Do you mind that?"
The android shrugs. "It is not your fault, or mine. It just is. I see no reason to mind it."
The placid response reminds Wanda of her brother's mind, when he had made up his mind to do nothing but stay at Wanda's side; a calm and perfect certainty, of nothing but honesty.
They are still sat beside each other at eleven at night, when the heart monitor flatlines.
Vision flies, immediately to it, then reaches into Andrej's chest, and starts to pulse his heart. Wanda stands on the other side of the boy, scarlet dancing from her hands, to his lungs, to his mind, maintaining them as best she is able. His mind is still dancing, grey and cream and white and ivory, and she lashes together a bond, a looser version of the one she had made to her brother's.Snowsmoke! she calls, and hears a faint reply. Hold on. We will help you, but you must hold on.
Wanda closes her eyes. She guides the neurons in his brain to stay alive, she guides air into and out of his lungs, and feels the layer and layer and overlaying of Vision's hand around Andrej's heart, forcing life to continue. There is concern on the android's face, and Wanda lashes together another rapid bridge, aiming for the stone on his brow. Golden light fills her mind, and the warm wise face of patience. We can do this, is all he says, and Wanda nods. With three more careful pulses of his hand, Vision pulls it free of Andrej's chest. Wanda withdraws her magic, scarlet returning, humming, under her skin, bond to Vision falling loose, bond to the boy on the bed remaining.
And Andrej heaves a breath of his own.
They sit again, on the bed across from Andrej. Wanda has been a day already without sleep, but knows she cannot rest now. Some distant part of her mind wonders at the lack of blood, the lack of gore, on Vision's hands, but the rest of her is peering down the gold and grey cobweb bridge to Andrej's mind. Icicles sing in a wind, at his end, and Wanda finds her mental choir matching their harmonies.
Beside her Vision's fingers rise to the stone on his brow, and fall. "When you… you went through the stone. How...?"
"It is the focus," Wanda says. "Of your powers, and of mine, and Andrej's, and his. I thought it was best, to link us three together with the stone. Did you mind?"
Vision shakes his head. "Will you remake it? I have not… the stone was just destruction to me, a way I could destroy Ultron's bodies. For it to help, it's. I." Wanda smiles at the android, and lets scarlet tint her fingertips.
"Let me," is all she says. Her fingers skim the surface of the yellow stone, and turn it golden. She feels a momentary shock from it, as though her mind's stretch has increased, before it is gone. The bond to Vision's mind is scarlet and magenta, burgundy in the middle, and chased through with gold. It is stronger than the cobweb link to Andrej's, though she is not sure if that is because Vision is awake, or because he has the stone.
Vision stares at nothingness, his mouth slightly open. There is the sound of the heart monitor, the hum of the light, the soft breath of the air-con, and Andrej's chest rising and falling. Neither speak.
This is beautiful .
Wanda smiles. It is nothing. In the privacy of her own mind she pulls up memories of the bond she had strung between her mind and her brother's. Silver and gold, scarlet and blue, a dancing, shining glory of love and trust and power. She mourns it, as deeply as she mourns her brother, and she knows she will never have its like again.
It is a day more before Andrej wakes. A round five days like Wanda's. His fever is faded, and the virus is gone. His DNA has changed slightly, when the gene test comes back, but he retains the gene markers that matched Wanda's and Pietro's. They do not know, yet, what he can do, and the medics are displeased when Wanda suggests they let him leave medical.
"We didn't show our gifts for days," Wanda argues. "Why should Snowsmoke be any different?"
It takes an especially loud yell from the argument for Vision to drag the director down, and Fury resolves it.
"The kid stays with Maximoff. Maximoff, Vision, if you see the kid do anything new you tell us. Everyone clear?"
There is some grumbling, but everyone nods, and Wanda scoops an exhausted Snowsmoke into her arms, and carries him back to her room. Andrej's head nestles against Wanda's shoulder. Vision pads along behind them, behind Wanda's left shoulder, and his mind offers the gentlest goodnight Wanda has ever perceived.
Wanda does not sleep. She has lost track of how long she has gone without sleep, but does not particularly care to know. Seeing Snowsmoke sleeping - the last traces of fever-sweat on his brow, pale hair, curled small - remind her all too much of how she waited those last four days at her brother's bedside, waiting for him to wake too. She wonders, slightly, if there may have been truth in Andrej's other theory; that her brother had survived because she loved him and would have poured all her newfound power into it. She knows it was not a dissimilar feeling that drove her to twist her power into saving Andrej.
Her hand ghosts over his brow, knuckles dusting through his hair, and he sleeps still. His chest rises and falls, the blanket she placed over him moves too, and his mind turns, like snow in a gentle wind, as he sleeps. Wanda settles on her bed, and leans against the wall, and watches Snowsmoke sleep.
It is cold come morning, when Wanda wakes. She did not notice how she had dozed off, but dozed off she had, her head sinking to her chest, her hands fisted in her blankets. Around her wrist Pietro's scarf is still tied, and she looses it, carefully, and wraps it about her neck. When she breathes deeply she can still smell him, and it almost makes her weep. In the other bed Andrej sleeps peacefully, breath misting before him, fingertips twitching at the cold, but not yet gone blue. Wanda rises, pulls a blanket from her bed, rich red and scarlet, and tucks it around him.
Vision comes by, shortly before Andrej wakes. He is blinking as he walks in, the tiny lenses in his eyes setting and resetting. His fingers knock at the door, and when it swings open with Wanda's scarlet he rests his hand on the doorframe.
"It is colder here. Would you like me to turn the heating up?"
Wanda shakes her head. "We have blankets. We will be fine."
"How is he?" The android's voice holds nothing but concern, and even his mind is dancing with the swirling, shimmering, grey-green-gold of worry.
"Resting. He is resting." Wanda's eyes watch Andrej, curled into his pillow. At some point he moved from lying on his back to lying on his belly, his face turned toward Wanda, one hand curled a short inch from his nose. White-blond hair lies splayed on his pillow, over his face, over his blankets, looking like loops of fine silken wire, or watered silk like metal.
They are both silent a while. Wanda knows she looks exhausted; the sleep she managed last night was not nearly enough for how long she had been awake. Vision watches Andrej quietly, and Wanda can hear his mind humming, silver, green and burgundy, in curiosity and study. When she reaches down the echo of the bond she had made she sees more clearly, watches him count and calculate breathing and pulse and heart rate. Wanda shifts to one side of her bed, and pulls the pillow onto her lap. With one hand she gestures at the space she made.
The android's brows rise. "May I?"
Wanda nods, and Vision is silent as he crosses the floor, and settles beside Wanda on the bed. They are quiet, just the sounds of their breathing and Andrej's. Vision's voice is soft.
"Do you have any ideas as to what he may be able to do?"
Wanda shrugs. "Some. The Doctor had ideas for P-," she stutters the first but continues, "Pietro's and mine, but wasn't right. This," she gestures, to herself, to Andrej, and vaguely outside, toward her brother's grave, "it cannot be predicted. It is not just what makes us who we are, but what we think anchors us to being human. P- my brother valued himself as my twin, as my protector, as the one who knew the streets, and how to find safety. I valued myself as my brother's twin, as Andrej's friend, as one who knew how to help people and ally them to us and make them fear us. I don't know, yet, what Andrej thinks anchors himself to humanity more than anything."
The mumble that comes from Andrej is quiet, Wanda thinks at first that it may be a bubble of thought rather than speech, before the boy pushes himself up. "Snowsmoke," he says again. "That makes me human. To your brother I was information, to the others I was the alley witch. To you I'm Snowsmoke. A person. That's what anchors me to human." The boy grins, yellow teeth against white skin. "That and cigarettes."
Vision looks concerned, Wanda smiles, and a small carton of cigarettes is thrown across the room to Snowsmoke.
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