FIC: bloodstream (mcu, wanda maximoff, gen, pg) for perpetual
perpetual asked for some Wanda Maximoff fic. Sorry it's late.
Bloodstream (mcu, wanda maximoff, gen, pg)
"You're not a people person, you know?" Pietro told her once.
Wanda didn't look up from the spoon spinning in her coffee, twirling like a music box ballerina without her fingers on it.
"And you are?" she asked.
"I'm the one with the personality," he said. "You're the one with--"
She looked up, arching an eyebrow. "The looks?"
"Me again," Pietro said. "You're--what do they call it?--the brains of the operation."
The dorms in the Avengers facility in New York were clean. The beds were soft, the linens freshly laundered. She was, she knew, completely safe within these walls.
She had never been more uncomfortable in her entire life.
Wanda rose when it was still dark; she'd caught sleep in snatches again. She remembered, years ago, pointing a cardboard tube kaleidoscope up to the light: the brilliantly colored patterns constantly changing before her eyes. Sleep was like that, these days: dreams would bleed into living, everything changing like those fast-motion videos of flowers blooming and dying, dilating and contracting, everything jewel-toned and not quite real.
When she'd put the kaleidoscope down, she'd been dizzy. It had taken a while for her eyes to catch up with the real world.
It was hard to believe this was the real world.
Wanda showered, wrung the water out of her long hair, and dressed carefully and in black. She combed through her hair with her fingers, wiped the water from her brow, traced around her eyelashes with kohl.
"You're not a people person, you know?"
She knew. But she needed a favor.
***
Wanda had been hoping for Captain Rogers, but the only living soul she could find awake in the compound was the Widow, sipping coffee in the mess.
"I need a favor," Wanda said.
The Widow's face was emotionless, but Wanda could feel the rage and betrayal well up in Natasha, hot as burning coals. Wanda began to shrink away, but then the Widow looked at her. Unsmiling, she said, "What is it?"
Wanda told her.
The Widow considered a moment.
"Let me get my keys," she said finally.
***
Wanda carefully selected twelve white roses from the florist's.
"Do you want these dethorned?" the florist asked brightly, but Wanda shook her head. The roses were wrapped in white paper and tied with a purple bow.
"I thought maybe you'd take him home," the Widow said as they got back in the car.
"What home?" Wanda said.
Natasha nodded.
The Widow hung back as Wanda knelt at Pietro's marker. She laid the roses on the fresh cut grass, the smell pinching at her sinuses.
All her life, even before the experiments, Wanda had felt Pietro like another heartbeat, like something in her bloodstream. Since he'd been gone, she felt the loss corporally--a profound emptiness, like someone had sucked the marrow from her bones. Standing here, where he'd been laid to rest, she had been hoping that she might feel something again, but she felt nothing but emptiness.
Wanda knelt before the marker, pressed her fingertips to the cool stone. She waited for something to spark in her bloodstream, but nothing came.