(no subject)
hand in hand
rating: pg
characters: Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton
warnings: possession/mind control and its emotional effects
summary: She reached out for her brother. Something terrible reached back.
Sometimes family isn't what you're born with or what you lose; it's what you choose.
It begins, as terrible things almost always do, with darkness. Wanda isn’t afraid of the dark; after all, she has spent so much of her life in it that it has become a familiar friend. No, it isn’t the darkness that has scarred her before.
It is what comes from it.
She wanders through the enveloping shadows, pausing here and there to touch a craggy, charcoal-colored obelisk or midnight cloud, comfortable in the silence and isolation in a way she cannot be when waking, when thoughts and needs and demands all intrude on her mind and her time. There is peace here, in the black of night and dreams - and then there is a whisper.
Wanda?
It is instinctual, the turn, the leap of hope, the loss and prayers that crowd against the words in her throat. He is gone, he is dead, she scattered his ashes to the winds of their homeland long months ago, and yet her brother’s voice echoes in this surreal setting and she finds she answers as readily as if he never vanished.
In her heart, he has always been with her.
“Pietro?”
Her hand lifts of her own accord, stretches out towards the sound that curls through the darkness. Gestures have power; she has learned intimately that since awakening her abilities, has had that lesson ingrained in her bones as she strives to control herself. So it is not a simple movement, not only the yearning reach of a sister who has found herself incredibly and utterly alone without her brother. It is, at its most basic, an invitation.
And something slithers out of the black and into her nightmares, clawing its way in with glowing red eyes.
She had enough control in those first few moments of possession to send her body away, away from the Avengers base, tearing open the sky and ground in a desperate attempt to stop the slaughter she knew would be coming. The thing that lives inside her bones is comfortable with this new development, this arrival in a place of fields and dust so far removed from the Avengers it lusts after; after all, it wouldn’t do to face the monsters and gods of that team without having some time to practice in this body, would it? So it warps Wanda’s powers and twists the daylight into weapons, and casually discovers the limits of what she can do under a yellow sky and whispering grasses.
And all the while Wanda watches, a prisoner in her own body, fighting relentlessly to keep what little she can from the creature that worms through her brain and blood.
She realizes her mistake when it takes them to a nearby town, curious to see what havoc it can wreck in this form. The storefronts look familiar as she passes by them; the signs in the windows bring a sense of recognition when it turns to admire itself in the gleaming windows. But she doesn’t understand until shock grips her once she finally sees what they look like, once she sees how lurid red light flows from where her eyes should be and the menacing gleam of her power swirls like a cocoon around her. No wonder the people here saw them and ran for safety; no strangeness now, this empty, ghost-like feel.
No wonder the beast in her skin is satisfied with itself.
That shock is enough to help Wanda hide her thoughts, to tuck away the knowledge that would tear her apart if she let it. She thought of safety, in those seconds during waking when she still had some control; she thought of comfort and escape. She didn’t sent herself to somewhere removed beyond the Avengers’ sphere at all.
She thought of a little farmhouse in Iowa, where the demons of her past all seemed far, far away, and not ten miles from here is a family this creature would happily destroy.
There are sirens now, wailing to each other in the distance as someone sounds the alarm, but Wanda prays desperately for the policemen to stay away. If those cars come sliding into view, if those men and women try to take aim or challenge her, the thing coiling inside her heart will gladly destroy them. For now it is content to enjoy the fear that silences the town, drawing new and terrible shapes in red mist around them, and flexing their fingers to make reality dance and weave before them.
Then it clenches their hand to send out a blast of power, shattering the windows of the coffee shop and yoga studio from within, making the entirety of Main Street rattle. It is a child with a new plaything, a demon with new powers, and the flattened crops of grain and uprooted oak trees it has already left behind will be nothing compared to the destruction that burns in its twisted, blackened heart.
A car door closes with an echo that travels down the long and empty street. The beast turns then, delighted with the idea of a challenge however easily it will be dismissed, and at first Wanda believes they will see a policeman meant to learn why the Avengers take care of, and come after, their own.
Instead they see Clint Barton walking down the bleached pavement, footsteps steady in his scuffed boots, a quiver slung across his worn T-shirt and the lifeline of his bow held in one hand.
“Hey, Wanda.”
The monster purrs with pleasure as it recognizes the Avenger, brown hair tousled and Band-Aids scattered across his hands. It knows him, knows of all the Avengers, and seeks after their lives like trophies. That is, ultimately, why it has come. But it doesn’t know - it doesn’t know about -
Wanda stuffs the thought in the deepest layer of her mind and begs for him to stop her, to use his bow, to end this.
He does not.
“Wanda isn’t… here, anymore,” the beast answers. Idle currents of power drift around their feet, waiting for its commands to send them into motion. Well, it has been intending to collect the entire set of Avengers; why not start with the outdated models? Already Wanda can feel its anticipation, its planning for a single, simple display of power. The battle she has waged against its hold on her is a losing one, but she has to try. She cannot help but try.
She cannot let it kill her friend.
“I find that kinda hard to believe. As much as I hate Loki, I learned a little something about mind control.” His boots crunch to a stop on the broken glass ten paces away, too close, too close. He won’t be able to take a shot before the creature in her body takes his life. “She’s still in there.”
“Mm. And you were always the one to prefer honesty over the little lies we tell ourselves, Clint Barton.”
Clint snorts, rocking slightly on his feet.
“See? Like I said, she’s still in there.” He meets their eyes, his searching, thousand-yard stare unchanged by the glowing haze. “Trust me, Wanda, when I say this is just another door you’ve gotta step through.”
“Quaint,” it comments with a delicate sniff while Wanda stills inside the red haze, recovers from her ceaseless battle. “But ultimately useless. Much like you, it would seem.”
The uneven, amused grin that Clint responds with catches the beast off guard. “Yeah, maybe. But the thing is, I’m here. And so’re you. And while I retired from being an Avenger, I get the feeling you want to do some pretty bad things. I can’t let you. That’s just how it’s gonna be.”
It shifts subtly into a more poised stance, its mocking contempt exchanged for a hunger that curls through their belly and twines around their hands like the obedient red mist. “Then I don’t expect you’ll be here for very long.”
Clint doesn’t draw an arrow and fire with the lightning reflexes she’s seen before. He doesn’t bring his bow up or dive aside to avoid the imminent blow. Instead he opens his arms in a loose, easy gesture, his bow dangling from the fingers of one hand as he leaves every defense he has down.
“Go ahead. I’m only human; no powers here. Just flesh and blood and failings.” His grin turns grim and cutting. “It’ll only take a moment.”
The thing living in her can’t resist such an opening in the same way it couldn’t resist preening and showing off; it is in its nature to play to such moments. Their hand sweeps up, dragging a tide of red power behind it, and flings out towards the archer -
- only to halt. In the final moment before the red mist can manifest as death and damage, it flashes into the air and vanishes. The outstretched hand turns palm up, its pointing fingers curling into a gesture that is, at its most basic, one of entreaty.
And Wanda, and only Wanda, hits the glass-covered ground on her knees.
Clint smiles at her through the dissipating red fog of her gaze, his own eyes shadowed, his pride mixed with bruised empathy. “Welcome back.”
She struggles in her newly regained freedom to draw in a long, aching breath, a breeze drifting curiously down the street to brush over her face, to bring in fresh air. Barton slings his bow across his back in a fluid movement and crosses the space between them as she exhales, savoring the feeling of being anchored back in her own skin. It is easy for him to lift her off the faded pavement and broken glass, easy for him to carry her the way that Pietro would even as the gashes in her legs begin to seep a fresh and brilliant red, and he heads for a nearby cafe table.
“And that’s why you’re an Avenger,” he tells her quietly, making no mention of how her body begins to shake against him as though from a chilling fever. All of the fear, the anxiety, the despair that built up behind the walls of her silence crash down at those words, shattering every illusion she could have drawn up of self-control, and Clint sets her carefully in a chair as she finally, finally breaks down.
He stays with her in that empty stretch of Main Street until her sobs have died away, until the blood has dried on her knees and the T-shirt he pulled off to slow the bleeding. He stays, a silent and steady pillar of support, until the other Avengers have arrived in the Quinjet and he’s briefed them on the confrontation, and Wanda isn’t sure who she was weeping for at the last.
“It didn’t know,” she tells him exhaustedly before her teammates coax her into leaving, cleared for the journey back home as she is by Vision and Clint’s own testimony. It seems more important than what he already knew, than overcoming the monster to save his life. “Your family, it didn’t know. I couldn’t let it hurt them.”
Clint glances down at the sidewalk, the familiar creases in his forehead appearing before he nods. But he doesn’t say anything of imagining that creature at the safehouse, doesn’t give away any sign of resignation but for the corners of his mouth pulling to the sides. Instead he looks up and takes her hand, squeezing it with scarred and bandaged fingers calloused from bowstrings and gun grips and tools for endless home renovations. “Thank you. You’re a strong woman, Wanda. He’d be proud.”
Pietro’s voice whispers through her mind - Wanda? - but she knows it now for the trick that it is. She will not cry; she has no more tears left to shed. “I hope so,” she replies instead, thinking of Lila and Cooper and Laura and Nate, of the warm summer afternoons she has spent in the creaking, comforting air of the farmhouse.
Wanda? The creature asks forlornly, looking for a way back in from its banishment, but Pietro’s namesake is safe and loved and living, not ten miles from here. And after all, her twin has never left her heart.
Wanda closes her eyes, holding onto Clint’s hand, and finds peace in the darkness there.
rating: pg
characters: Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton
warnings: possession/mind control and its emotional effects
summary: She reached out for her brother. Something terrible reached back.
Sometimes family isn't what you're born with or what you lose; it's what you choose.
It begins, as terrible things almost always do, with darkness. Wanda isn’t afraid of the dark; after all, she has spent so much of her life in it that it has become a familiar friend. No, it isn’t the darkness that has scarred her before.
It is what comes from it.
She wanders through the enveloping shadows, pausing here and there to touch a craggy, charcoal-colored obelisk or midnight cloud, comfortable in the silence and isolation in a way she cannot be when waking, when thoughts and needs and demands all intrude on her mind and her time. There is peace here, in the black of night and dreams - and then there is a whisper.
Wanda?
It is instinctual, the turn, the leap of hope, the loss and prayers that crowd against the words in her throat. He is gone, he is dead, she scattered his ashes to the winds of their homeland long months ago, and yet her brother’s voice echoes in this surreal setting and she finds she answers as readily as if he never vanished.
In her heart, he has always been with her.
“Pietro?”
Her hand lifts of her own accord, stretches out towards the sound that curls through the darkness. Gestures have power; she has learned intimately that since awakening her abilities, has had that lesson ingrained in her bones as she strives to control herself. So it is not a simple movement, not only the yearning reach of a sister who has found herself incredibly and utterly alone without her brother. It is, at its most basic, an invitation.
And something slithers out of the black and into her nightmares, clawing its way in with glowing red eyes.
She had enough control in those first few moments of possession to send her body away, away from the Avengers base, tearing open the sky and ground in a desperate attempt to stop the slaughter she knew would be coming. The thing that lives inside her bones is comfortable with this new development, this arrival in a place of fields and dust so far removed from the Avengers it lusts after; after all, it wouldn’t do to face the monsters and gods of that team without having some time to practice in this body, would it? So it warps Wanda’s powers and twists the daylight into weapons, and casually discovers the limits of what she can do under a yellow sky and whispering grasses.
And all the while Wanda watches, a prisoner in her own body, fighting relentlessly to keep what little she can from the creature that worms through her brain and blood.
She realizes her mistake when it takes them to a nearby town, curious to see what havoc it can wreck in this form. The storefronts look familiar as she passes by them; the signs in the windows bring a sense of recognition when it turns to admire itself in the gleaming windows. But she doesn’t understand until shock grips her once she finally sees what they look like, once she sees how lurid red light flows from where her eyes should be and the menacing gleam of her power swirls like a cocoon around her. No wonder the people here saw them and ran for safety; no strangeness now, this empty, ghost-like feel.
No wonder the beast in her skin is satisfied with itself.
That shock is enough to help Wanda hide her thoughts, to tuck away the knowledge that would tear her apart if she let it. She thought of safety, in those seconds during waking when she still had some control; she thought of comfort and escape. She didn’t sent herself to somewhere removed beyond the Avengers’ sphere at all.
She thought of a little farmhouse in Iowa, where the demons of her past all seemed far, far away, and not ten miles from here is a family this creature would happily destroy.
There are sirens now, wailing to each other in the distance as someone sounds the alarm, but Wanda prays desperately for the policemen to stay away. If those cars come sliding into view, if those men and women try to take aim or challenge her, the thing coiling inside her heart will gladly destroy them. For now it is content to enjoy the fear that silences the town, drawing new and terrible shapes in red mist around them, and flexing their fingers to make reality dance and weave before them.
Then it clenches their hand to send out a blast of power, shattering the windows of the coffee shop and yoga studio from within, making the entirety of Main Street rattle. It is a child with a new plaything, a demon with new powers, and the flattened crops of grain and uprooted oak trees it has already left behind will be nothing compared to the destruction that burns in its twisted, blackened heart.
A car door closes with an echo that travels down the long and empty street. The beast turns then, delighted with the idea of a challenge however easily it will be dismissed, and at first Wanda believes they will see a policeman meant to learn why the Avengers take care of, and come after, their own.
Instead they see Clint Barton walking down the bleached pavement, footsteps steady in his scuffed boots, a quiver slung across his worn T-shirt and the lifeline of his bow held in one hand.
“Hey, Wanda.”
The monster purrs with pleasure as it recognizes the Avenger, brown hair tousled and Band-Aids scattered across his hands. It knows him, knows of all the Avengers, and seeks after their lives like trophies. That is, ultimately, why it has come. But it doesn’t know - it doesn’t know about -
Wanda stuffs the thought in the deepest layer of her mind and begs for him to stop her, to use his bow, to end this.
He does not.
“Wanda isn’t… here, anymore,” the beast answers. Idle currents of power drift around their feet, waiting for its commands to send them into motion. Well, it has been intending to collect the entire set of Avengers; why not start with the outdated models? Already Wanda can feel its anticipation, its planning for a single, simple display of power. The battle she has waged against its hold on her is a losing one, but she has to try. She cannot help but try.
She cannot let it kill her friend.
“I find that kinda hard to believe. As much as I hate Loki, I learned a little something about mind control.” His boots crunch to a stop on the broken glass ten paces away, too close, too close. He won’t be able to take a shot before the creature in her body takes his life. “She’s still in there.”
“Mm. And you were always the one to prefer honesty over the little lies we tell ourselves, Clint Barton.”
Clint snorts, rocking slightly on his feet.
“See? Like I said, she’s still in there.” He meets their eyes, his searching, thousand-yard stare unchanged by the glowing haze. “Trust me, Wanda, when I say this is just another door you’ve gotta step through.”
“Quaint,” it comments with a delicate sniff while Wanda stills inside the red haze, recovers from her ceaseless battle. “But ultimately useless. Much like you, it would seem.”
The uneven, amused grin that Clint responds with catches the beast off guard. “Yeah, maybe. But the thing is, I’m here. And so’re you. And while I retired from being an Avenger, I get the feeling you want to do some pretty bad things. I can’t let you. That’s just how it’s gonna be.”
It shifts subtly into a more poised stance, its mocking contempt exchanged for a hunger that curls through their belly and twines around their hands like the obedient red mist. “Then I don’t expect you’ll be here for very long.”
Clint doesn’t draw an arrow and fire with the lightning reflexes she’s seen before. He doesn’t bring his bow up or dive aside to avoid the imminent blow. Instead he opens his arms in a loose, easy gesture, his bow dangling from the fingers of one hand as he leaves every defense he has down.
“Go ahead. I’m only human; no powers here. Just flesh and blood and failings.” His grin turns grim and cutting. “It’ll only take a moment.”
The thing living in her can’t resist such an opening in the same way it couldn’t resist preening and showing off; it is in its nature to play to such moments. Their hand sweeps up, dragging a tide of red power behind it, and flings out towards the archer -
- only to halt. In the final moment before the red mist can manifest as death and damage, it flashes into the air and vanishes. The outstretched hand turns palm up, its pointing fingers curling into a gesture that is, at its most basic, one of entreaty.
And Wanda, and only Wanda, hits the glass-covered ground on her knees.
Clint smiles at her through the dissipating red fog of her gaze, his own eyes shadowed, his pride mixed with bruised empathy. “Welcome back.”
She struggles in her newly regained freedom to draw in a long, aching breath, a breeze drifting curiously down the street to brush over her face, to bring in fresh air. Barton slings his bow across his back in a fluid movement and crosses the space between them as she exhales, savoring the feeling of being anchored back in her own skin. It is easy for him to lift her off the faded pavement and broken glass, easy for him to carry her the way that Pietro would even as the gashes in her legs begin to seep a fresh and brilliant red, and he heads for a nearby cafe table.
“And that’s why you’re an Avenger,” he tells her quietly, making no mention of how her body begins to shake against him as though from a chilling fever. All of the fear, the anxiety, the despair that built up behind the walls of her silence crash down at those words, shattering every illusion she could have drawn up of self-control, and Clint sets her carefully in a chair as she finally, finally breaks down.
He stays with her in that empty stretch of Main Street until her sobs have died away, until the blood has dried on her knees and the T-shirt he pulled off to slow the bleeding. He stays, a silent and steady pillar of support, until the other Avengers have arrived in the Quinjet and he’s briefed them on the confrontation, and Wanda isn’t sure who she was weeping for at the last.
“It didn’t know,” she tells him exhaustedly before her teammates coax her into leaving, cleared for the journey back home as she is by Vision and Clint’s own testimony. It seems more important than what he already knew, than overcoming the monster to save his life. “Your family, it didn’t know. I couldn’t let it hurt them.”
Clint glances down at the sidewalk, the familiar creases in his forehead appearing before he nods. But he doesn’t say anything of imagining that creature at the safehouse, doesn’t give away any sign of resignation but for the corners of his mouth pulling to the sides. Instead he looks up and takes her hand, squeezing it with scarred and bandaged fingers calloused from bowstrings and gun grips and tools for endless home renovations. “Thank you. You’re a strong woman, Wanda. He’d be proud.”
Pietro’s voice whispers through her mind - Wanda? - but she knows it now for the trick that it is. She will not cry; she has no more tears left to shed. “I hope so,” she replies instead, thinking of Lila and Cooper and Laura and Nate, of the warm summer afternoons she has spent in the creaking, comforting air of the farmhouse.
Wanda? The creature asks forlornly, looking for a way back in from its banishment, but Pietro’s namesake is safe and loved and living, not ten miles from here. And after all, her twin has never left her heart.
Wanda closes her eyes, holding onto Clint’s hand, and finds peace in the darkness there.