There’s a spattering of dust across her cheeks, speckled in the ends of her hair. Her clothes aren’t old, but they look old. Her cheeks are hollow, eyes dark, her knuckles are scattered with half-healed cuts, each one surrounded in a mix of blood and dirt.
She’s a ghastly sight to behold, feet pushed hard into the ground even sitting there. As if she’s always reading to run.
She can hear the approaching footsteps. Her teeth grit, her feet push into the ground harder. The footsteps get closer and closer. She pretends not to notice them, but she does. The thud thud thud is too hard to ignore, her ear perk to the sound. They stop near her and the owner stands there.
Familiar. Too familiar. Her shoulders tense, hands curl tight as she pushes herself up off the park bench. Her feet are dragging her away. She doesn’t stop them. She left for a reason. She wasn’t going back. S.H.I.E.L.D would have to take her kicking and screaming if they wanted her back. Not even Clint Barton could convince her.
She feels the snag of fingers around her wrist. Gentle, but she snaps away from it like it burned her. She whips around, mustering up the dark glower she could. He doesn’t seem all that fazed, just lifts his hands as if to show me meant no harm.
“I’m not here to take you back. I just want to talk.”
She doesn’t want to talk. Not at all. Not about the Avengers, not about S.H.I.E.L.D or Sokovia or Hydra and definitely not about Pietro. Clint was the last person to see him alive. Pietro died saving him. It makes an ache curl inside her, slipping through the cracks in her armoured heart.
“You didn’t stay for the funeral.”
Her jaw tightens enough that anybody else would be worried about breaking a tooth. She’s not worried. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t speak. For a few moments at least. He’s staring at her, desperate. (He wants to help.) She knows this, whispered in the back of her mind.
Her voice is deep, thickly accented, scratchy in her throat. Unused. She doesn’t remember the last time she’d actually spoken. She didn’t talk to the people she passed on the street. She stole to survive so it wasn’t like she talked to people behind registers. She barely registers the voice as being hers.
“I know exactly who he was.”
There’s a sharpness in her tone. Sharp like a scalpel. He flinches a bit, barely noticeable. (Wanda notices.) There’s a tremor in her hands. She curls them tight. It happens so often that her nail slips right back into the deep crescent crevices in her palms. She twists on her heel, ready to walk away.
“Wanda, I just want to help.”
She whips around fast. (fast. fast like him.)
She can’t stop her mouth, her mind. It’s a volcano. Here’s the smoke.
“You what? You want to talk? To be my m-my therapist?”
Clouds of ash are rising.
“Pietro is dead. The last person I had. Is dead. He is gone and I cannot get him back. I have lost everything. Everyone. I have nobody.”
Lava. Molten and burning and clawing up her throat. It’s burning. It’s choking.
“He was my brother. My twin. What were you expecting me to do? Sit there with people I do not even know and watch him get lowered into ground that is not even home? I can not have that as my last memory of him. I will never see him again! And he’ll…h-he will…”
She’s trembling all over. Tears are pooling in her eyes, blurring her sight. Her fingers are curling from her sides, reaching for a messy old necklace around her neck. A locket. Her’s from him. Old and weak and mock silver. She can’t look at Clint anymore. She looks anywhere else. The street lamp. The wayward garbage thrown aside by those to big to bother worrying about the planet.
“He’ll never see me again…a-and he won’t see me get married.”
Her voice is choking, catching on sobs that force her way out of her throat. Tears roll down her face and she swipes at them with messy hands, leaving streaks of damp dirt on her high, hollow cheeks.
“He’ll never know my kids.”
Clint is up. Moving slow. A warm hand touches her shoulder, slowly guiding her into his arms. She claws her fingers into his arms, sobbing hopelessly. (gone gone gone.) Pietro didn’t deserve to grow up with parents and grow up too fast. He didn’t deserve the wracking nightmares Hydra wrought. He didn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve to never grow up.
And, somewhere, in the shattered selfish remnants of her mind, a voice whispered that Wanda didn’t deserve to grow up without him.
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