Mending Her Halo (Part 1)
A/N: This is a sequel to "Her Broken Halo," one of the fics I wrote a long time ago. To read "Her Broken Halo" please see my Masterlist under "Conflict/Darker" for the links to all parts.
It's been three years since Pietro lost you and he carries that grief with him everyday with no solution in sight to bring you back. He's been working a local Avenger's assignment chasing down a murderess, masked vigilante who is a pain is his ass, but reminds him of you in some ways. It's not you. He's gotten close enough and checked. Now your essence in Wanda's ring keeps shocking him when his college lab partner gets close to it. What is going on?
Pairing: Pietro x Reader
Warning: light smut, language, death of loved one/main character, grief, not trying to move on but doing some questionable things that one may see a moving on, Pietro feels a lot of guilt
Words: 2,590
A heavy rainfall blurred Pietro's vision, but he was able to see the telltale sign of the vigilante's work. Her work, the perpetual thorn in his side. A ghost haunting his waking and dream state.
The lifeless body of yet another one of New York’s worst was artfully posed in doll clothes. Garish make up made the hit all the more gruesome. But it was most likely deserved.
"I've got one." Pietro rubbed his temples. It was Sunday night, he had class in the morning, and his ever demanding lab partner, albeit smart and always right, would not appreciate him sleeping through it.
“Cold case?" Nat asked through the comms, though he knew she already knew the answer.
Pietro looked to the old evidence box propped under the corpses arm. It had been thoughtfully tied in a clear trash bag.
"She checked the weather," Pietro murmured and went to read the name on the crumbling cardboard box. "Rag doll murders?"
“One sec." Nat typed for a moment. "Serial killer from the 70s. How old does he look?"
Pietro squinted before just wiping the buildup of water from his eyes. “Definitely looks old enough. Probably about 90."
“I'll alert Captain Baylor. It is one of the evidence boxes that was stolen a few months ago. How long do you think he's been there?"
"Considering this is a very successful brunch spot's alleyway, and nobody reported anything until 9 tonight, not too long. Do I really have to wait for Baylor to show with his gym bros?"
"Yes, Pietro," Nat sighed. He asked every time, and the answer was always the same.
Pietro wanted to whine. Why him? Why did he get assigned to the new local Avengers task force? Lucky for him Baylor and company were always quick hoping to get any sign of her.
Most of the time they were too late, but sometimes she waited. And as if his thoughts summoned her, her mocking, sultry voice came from above.
"Oh boys.” All guns aimed toward a fire escape with no sign of her. "I did your job, again. You're welcome.” She was perched, cross-legged on the tower of empty milk crates next to the body. Almost floating on them.
Pietro crept back, as her attention focused on Baylor. She was quick to notice, but she made no move as Baylor threatened injury for the fifth time that month.
Twelfth since the beginning of the year and it was only April.
She pouted, somehow conveying puppy dog eyes from behind her mask. "While I love to engage in some verbal sparring, this has gotten repetitive. You’re going to arrest me? Shoot me? You want to work on a compromise?" She yawned loudly. "I must get—" She was gone in a blink.
"Fuck." Baylor kicked the crates over.
"Going." She was back on the fire escape grinning down at them before bouncing up the steps to her inevitable escape. Bullets or not.
"Maximoff!” Baylor barked. "What are you waiting for? Make yourself useful."
Pietro gritted his teeth as Nat also warned him to keep it to himself. This was why he was on this specific assignment. He was the only one who could keep up with the vigilante. She didn’t have super speed, just the ability to appear where she pleased and become non-corporeal as she saw fit.
"You think you got her this time?" Nat wondered.
“Yes,” Pietro grunted as he sped after the pain in his ass.
She teased him from rooftop to rooftop, always being one step ahead and disappearing when he got ahold of any part of her.
Each time she goaded him. "So close… Come and get me… You almost had me… Don't you just want to, I don't know, ahh—” she had mimed choking herself with gleeful glint behind the mask.
Pietro growled.
"She's really leading you on a chase tonight,” Nat mused. Pietro could hear a bag open over the coms.
"Are you seriously eating right now?" Pietro groaned.
"This is my scheduled programming, Pietro. It's entertaining. It definitely needs a snack." He could imagine Nat kicking up her feet on the desk watching his live camera feed as he scrambled after the vigilante.
Pietro watched her jump through a boarded window of an abandoned warehouse. It only took a few seconds for her to be on him when he entered. She had been ready for him to look for her. He cursed himself as her arms wound around his neck and her legs constricted around his arms and torso.
She shimmied his optical camera frame behind his head and tossed it out a broken window.
“I’ve lost visual.” Nat sounded disappointed, not concerned.
Pietro flung himself back onto the floor and the vigilante disappeared. His spine painfully crashed onto the concrete.
"Oof, that looked like it hurt." The vigilante was solid again, standing over him. He pulled her calves out from underneath her. She fell onto him, and he quickly rolled her over, pinning her wrists above her head.
Every fiber of Pietro came alive with the feeling of her chest breathing deeply underneath him.
"Truce?" she offered with a small smile.
Pietro growled in response.
"That's a no." She was infuriating. Always so sure she was winning the game, and she was as she basically turned to smoke underneath him. His face landed on the cool, saw dust covered floor.
She stood a few feet away waiting for his first move. Ready to let him have a fair fight. Well, as fair as she deemed. Balanced was a better term. Her ability combined with his superspeed made it rare for full contact hits.
So, when Pietro's elbow collided with her cheek bone at a neck breaking speed, eliciting a guttural gasp of shock from her, he hesitated. Only for her quickly retaliate by giving him a high tick to his ear, knocking out his comms. Her foot came down and shattered it.
"What the fuck?" Pietro clutched his ear as she gingerly touched her already bruised and swollen cheekbone.
"I could say the same to you." She showed no remorse, she only glowered at him. "We agreed, no head shots."
"I agreed to no such thing," Pietro snorted. The ringing in his ear was starting to subside. But it was going to ache for a few days if he had to hazard a guess.
"Foreplay,” she teased and cocked her head at him as they began to slowly circle each other. Waiting for an opening.
"That is not what—” Pietro was unable to finish his sentence as her solid form latched onto him. Her mouth crashing onto his and her fingers wound into his hair, sharply pulling his head back.
A low moan vibrated in Pietro's throat, and he felt his weight shift, become weightless, and then come back heavier. His stomach dropped as he free-fell four feet onto a blanket laden bed. She never even noticed, though he was sure that it was second nature to her now.
Her lips trailed feverishly down to the hollow of his neck. He grazed the curve of her ass.
"I'm still turning you in," he grunted as she worked all his weaknesses.
He felt her lips smile against his pulse point. "You say that every time.” Her hand trailed down his abdomen and it took everything in Pietro to not drive his cock into her hand.
"I mean it." he insisted, "You are a nuisance to my life. I would finally be able to have a weekend off.”
“What fun would that be?” she nipped at his ear.
“You are exhausting,” Pietro continued sliding his hands up her sides to unzip her fitted jacket, exposing only a sports bra. He unzipped that too. "And a literal pain in my ass. I should be turning you in right now to Baylor."
"Mmhh, you're no walk in the park either. If you and your silly avengers wouldn't meddle, I would have cleared all the cases NYPD has left to rot." She dipped her hand into his joggers. Pietro hissed, broke, and rolled into her. She tightened her legs around him.
“Instead, I find myself constantly distracted," she panted as he circled one of her nipples.
"You like me?" Pietro teased and pulled back. This earned him narrowed eyes through her mask and an almost too tight squeeze below.
"Don't flatter yourself. I don't like you, just what you do to me,” she snapped.
"Good, we're on the same page.”
"Pants off,” she ordered a kneeling back onto her heels, removing her clothing with no pretenses. "Everything off.”
"This is the last time.” Pietro was telling himself as much her. The guilt was already starting to set into his stomach. He would probably vomit after this. He should say no to her. He should have never engaged the first time. And all ten times after that.
But seeing her exposed to him it was almost like home. Her shape was nearly identical to yours. The scars were different, and she had a tattoo on the side of her rib cage. A small raven with a series of roman numeral under its talons.
It has been the snow-white hair and movements that had made him hesitate their first encounter, resulting in his ass kicking. It had looked like Hale. But on the next encounter when he had got her in a headlock, he could tell the structure was all wrong to be you.
He didn't know whether to be relieved that you weren't hiding from him or cry that his hope had died. That night he drank a lot, destroyed a few sparring dummies, and didn't leave his bed until the vigilante’s next act. Which was how they had fallen into this pattern.
Fight. Delude himself with her familiar shape. Snap, argue, fuck, and regret.
"You say that every time.” She lounged back on her pillows, raising an eyebrow at him.
"I mean it this time," he grunted, stripping himself. She made an unconvinced humming agreement as she soaked in the sight of him.
For a second Pietro could have sworn he saw a glimmer of sadness, but it was quickly replaced with a devilish smile as she hooked her legs around his waist pulling him to her.
Pietro switched off his logical thinking and closed his eyes. He could almost make it believable that it was you by feel. Almost. Which is why when they finished and she shifted him just out of sight of the Avengers tower, he promptly vomited in the alleyway.
Nat checked in on him when he came upstairs, and his lie was already prepared. It was the same one every time, the vigilante shifted him to Buffalo of all places.
Each step Pietro took towards your old, shared room had his stomach eating itself. He dove into the shower, the water scalding as he scrubbed his skin raw, trying to wash his guilt away. It was only marginally helpful.
"Better than nothing," he said to his reflection, wet tendrils of silver hair falling into his eyes.
Once he was dry and the guilt was only a dull ache, he went back into the bedroom and opened the top drawer of your dresser, pulling a long chain with two rings looped on it. He never wore it when he was dealing with the vigilante.
Your engagement ring and the ruby ring Pietro had given to Wanda that had been gifted back to him settled over his sternum. A familiar pulse of energy seeped into him.
His hand came to rest over the rings as he murmured a million apologies for the past, present, and future.
****
A sharp pen jabbed into Pietro’s side, startling him awake.
"You're drooling,” his lab partner, Harmony, hissed. He blearily blinked at her in her lab coat and safety goggles. Had he slept through the instructions?
"Sorry,” he apologized, donning his own gear.
She shoved her notes at him and started setting up their equipment. He skimmed over them. Not too complicated.
"Rough night?" she asked eyeing the beaker in front of her.
Pietro snorted. "You could say that."
"Coffee after to wrap up our notes?” she offered.
"I need to eat something." Pietro's stomach sounded in agreement.
"That can be arranged.” Harmony smiled and Pietro returned it, feeling a small semblance of normal for the first time in twenty-four hours. "But first I really need you to try and focus and not burn yourself.”
"That can be arranged,” he repeated her words.
****
Pietro watched her from the corner of his eye as Harmony glanced over their lab report. Her dark hair pulled atop her head in a messy bun and the circles under her eyes told him she also had a rough night. That was doubly confirmed when she violently rubbed her eyes.
"Late night." He turned to her, his knee brushing hers but neither bothered separating.
She groaned. "I was studying for that psych exam and then I fell asleep in my contacts".
"That exam isn't for another 3 weeks.” Pietro rolled his eyes.
"And you should be studying too you know," she sing-songed.
"And you shouldn't be studying so hard. Don't you work too? You’re a live-in nanny, right?”
"Yes, but I get the weekends off. Unlike somebody else I know.” Harmony joked. “I'm assuming you were out avenging last night?" She set aside their notes.
"Avenging." Pietro mused, his head falling back as he struggled to push down the creeping guilt.
"You seem to get a lot of local assignments now. When did that happen?"
Pietro peeked open an eye at her. "As compared to?"
She went quiet and was now very interested in their lab notes again.
"Are you keeping tabs on me?" Pietro rose an eyebrow at her.
Harmony pursed her lips. "No. I just happen to have some friends who are really into Avenger's blogs."
"Are these friends at the table with us now?”
"Shut it," she grumbled. Pietro leaned forward, playfully narrowing his eyes at her.
"No, please tell me about these blogs."
Harmony became a shade paler as her eyes fixated at the center of his chest.
"Hey, what—” He looked down to see the chain had slipped out from his shirt, the rings on full display. Her hand was half extended as her eyes warred with on indiscernible emotion.
Pietro clasped his hand around the rings, and he tucked them back into his shirt. She blinked and forced a relaxed smile. He swallowed hard as the guilt hit full force.
"My—My fiancée died a few years ago."
"Oh.” Harmony ducked her head down.
"She was an avenger too."
"I'm so sorry." And Pietro knew she meant it when she looked back up at him, her eyes filled with sincerity. "It's a beautiful ring. I'm sure she spent countless hours looking at it.”
"She did.” His leg began to bounce as he tried to shake the feeling a grief. It had not got any easier as the years passed by.
"I—I should go,” she stammered hastily packing her book bag. "My nanny kid has dance lessons after school, and I need to get that bag packed up. See you around, yeah?"
Pietro felt something was wrong, but she was she was already out the door before he could press her about it. A sharp pulse of energy shocked his sternum.
He hissed and looked to the ruby ring that glowed a moment before returning to be unseeming.
That was new.
