Chapter 3
Long ago, when they were barely thirteen, they had decided the framework of their relationship. They were, they had decided, twins first. People could insinuate they were lovers, suggest incest, lie. But they would only ever be siblings.
They had decided acceptable actions - acceptable thoughts too, when they had gained their powers - but were always siblings first. No matter what the most affection they would let themselves show was an embrace, and kisses pressed to hair or brows or cheeks.
This didn't really account for one of them returning from the dead.
Wanda crashes into Pietro's arms and her lips meet his a moment later. Pietro's mind stutters, body hesitates only a nanosecond before he scoops his sister up, kisses her back, and sets her on the bed. She curls in his lap, her brow pressed to his, their every breath intermingled, and kisses him again.
Pietro knows himself. Knows how he had loved his sister before waking, how he loves her now, their rules, their limitations, and sends them as a question to Wanda, even as he kisses her back.
Even uncertain he would never deny his sister the comfort she needs.
His fingers knot gently in her hair, as she sends a scarlet reply, soft as a sigh. Her memories and her feelings, her fear she would shape him in bringing him back. Pietro looks at her concerns and sets a single recurring question to check himself in his mind, and kisses his sister as warmly as she kissed him.
They stay like that awhile, kissing, questioning, knowing each other again, until Wanda stills.
"They are coming," she whispers, and curls small. Her arms wrap around his back, head curls to Pietro's collarbone. Pietro curls around her, bright eyes watching the door from over Wanda's head. They wait, and are wary.
They are first met by Snowsmoke, fingers leaving frosted trails on the walls, then joined by Vision, stone glowing, after the boy calls. The twins do not uncurl, just watch the door, and refuse to let go of each other.
Vision relaxes to see them, and Wanda realises that she broke her connections to Andrej and the android with her brother's return. Vision's hand taps his brow, expression asking, and Wanda shakes her head. Andrej watches them closely, and his eyes briefly narrow before relaxing. Vision watches them, curled so close, with something akin to confusion. Andrej tugs at the android's sleeve and Vision blinks.
"Will you want someone to talk to Miss Maximoff?" His voice and tone and words are, as ever, polite. Wanda shakes her head.
"I have Pietro."
"So it is him then?" Andrej speaks up, Sokovian swift off his tongue.
Wanda smiles, and nods. "It's Pietro."
Andrej grins and darts off. Vision, still looking confused, stays at the door until Wanda tuts. "Go and tell the others," she says. Vision's expression could only reasonably be described as a kicked puppy. Wanda sighs, softly. "I will explain later," she says. "I promise."
When they are both gone Pietro presses a kiss to Wanda's shoulder. "You don't owe him an explanation," he says.
"I know." Wanda's voice is quiet. "But he saved my life, and he has been kind. He helped when you were-." She cannot bring herself to say dead. "He helped. I want to tell him."
Pietro sighs and nuzzles her shoulder. "Can we trust them?" he asks, and Wanda shrugs her free shoulder.
"Vision: yes. Andrej: of course. The Widow: I think. I am not yet sure of all the others."
Pietro breathes deep. "You will be careful?"
"Always, brother of mine."
Pietro falls rapidly asleep. Being woken from death, and sprinting on an empty stomach, has not served him well, and Wanda tucks scarlet blankets around pale shoulders and blue hospital scrubs. Wanda strokes her hand through black and silver curls and leaves the room. It is still early enough in the afternoon for the others to all be active still, and Wanda sends out a scarlet feeler, seeking Vision's mind.
When it reaches him it dissipates, scarlet to burgundy-black and gold spelling out a simple message. Come to the Cradle.
Without a question or a query Vision goes.
The cradle is cleft down the middle from Mjolnir's strike, and from where Vision tore open what fried circuits could not. Wanda stands at its head, hands circled around her arms. She is half in shadow, where she stands, and Vision isn't sure what to make of it.
They notice each other, acknowledge each other, but neither speaks.
Until Vision does.
"You broke the connection."
Wanda shrugs. "Pietro was back," she says, as though it explains everything. In a way, Vision supposes, it does. The connection he had had to Wanda's mind had been a meagre thing, but it's snapping had left him reeling. The way Andrej's eyelids had flickered, and that the snow-and-gold bond was no longer visible to Vision's sight, told him that the same had happened to the boy too.
They lapse into quiet again, silence ringing through the room before Vision asks, "Will you remake it?"
Wanda offers only a wry smile and a shrug. Vision sights inwardly, and changes tack. "I can see your bond to him," he says. "It is scarlet at your end, and silver-veined-blue at his. It looks woven, more than the lone rope-tethers you made to my mind, and to Andrej's. It looks how it did when I first saw it, when I was born."
"Oh," is all Wanda says.
Vision continues. "I saw how the threads of it were shorn when your brother died at Novi Grad, saw your scarlet seeking his silver even after you'd destroyed Ultron's primary. I've watched your scarlet draw inward and draw outward, Miss Maximoff, because I cannot help but see it, with this stone in my brow. I saw the tentative start of recovery from a loss I could never comprehend, and today I have seen that recovery shattered by a remade bond." Vision does sigh then, soft and gentle. "Wanda, I may not have lived long, or know much - I am not even human - but if you want someone to talk to please know you can come to me. Just because you've regained what you lost does not mean you should lose what you have gained. You are safe here, at S.H.I.E.L.D.. You can have both old and new, if you want them."
Wanda is quiet for a long time, and Vision begins to wonder if he had said something wrong when a scarlet tendril meets his mind, and with it comes memories.
Vision observes them from the side, Wanda's scarlet tendril both holding him apart, and feeding him the emotions of the memory. He watches the day they lost their parents, sees them curled close together and understands.
Closeness means trust. Closeness means safety.
The next memory Wanda shows him is slightly silvered, borrowed from her brother's sleeping brain. They watch from behind Pietro as Wanda's scarlet seeks his mind.
Instinct, Wanda's tendril says to Vision. It was meant to happen by the nature of our gifts, by the nature of ourselves.
Vision understands. They are linked by their nature, fully, truly, inescapably. Their link is aided by years of closeness, a lifetime of trust, and the curious magic of their gifts. They do not need others, the way they do each other.
The next memory Wanda shows him lies betwixt the previous two in time. They are young, the twins, and discussing something fiercely, switching languages - Sokovian, German, English - with no warning. Then Wanda presses a brief kiss to Pietro's lips and the memory coalesces.
"We must not do that any longer," Memory-Wanda says. "It is siblinghood to us, but not to them. They will call it-,"
"Incest." Memory-Pietro's voice is a whisper. "They would be wrong."
The small fingers of Memory-Wanda's hand grasp her brother's chin. "What does that matter when they have the power to part us? We are thirteen Pietro. Children. They could send us to different foster homes, different orphanages. They could forbid us from seeing each other."
"But we are twins," Pietro says. "We are all we have."
Wanda's head bows. "They don't see it like we do. Until we're free we have to play by their rules. We can't kiss like that anymore. Even if we know it is because we are siblings, twins, and have no one else. They don't see it like that."
Pietro's head bows, his brow brushing Wanda's. His hand finds hers, larger fingers enveloping smaller. "And they have the power to part us."
The memory pauses there, commanded by Wanda's scarlet tendrils, and lets Vision take it in. The moment of pausing is painfully intimate, but clearly platonic. Pietro's hand holds Wanda's delicately, and though their brows almost touch they watch their own feet and maintain a simple distance, for all their closeness makes it seem smaller than it is.
Vision observes, and Vision comprehends.
When the scarlet retreats back to Wanda they are both still in the room with the Cradle. Wanda stands nearer now, one hand pressed to Vision's arm as though to stabilize him. Wanda's voice is soft.
"I may remake it. I don't know. But I have my brother back, back from the dead. I need to understand that first, relearn, remember being a twin, half a whole. That comes first."
Vision's small smile looks almost hopeless to Wanda, but she does not peek into his mind. Instead she shrugs. "Do you understand, Vision?" her voice is soft, almost affectionate, and Vision nods, shakes his head, and sighs.
"How you could be half a whole, and not whole on your own…." He trails off, without words.
Wanda's smile is small and soft. "It is all we have ever been, Pietro and I. Twins with no one else. Half the same organism, half of a whole. We don't have another way of being."
Vision looks only sad. "Have you ever even tried?"
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