Work Text:
As they leave the Raft Pietro is curled around Wanda’s shoulders, the way he used to back when they were on the streets. A few weeks ago she’d have found it overbearing - they were safe now, free now. They had a team , one which would help them and stand with them in a way that no one else would or could or ever had. A few weeks ago she’d have pushed him away and reminded him that, now, they could rely on others. A few weeks ago she’d not asked him to help the Captain and Barnes escape Germany, and forced him to leave her behind.
It’s not a few weeks ago and Wanda leans against her brother without a thought. He’s not facing the team, nor the knocked out guards. His body is facing hers and she’s facing ahead. Step by step by step they near the exit and the quinjet. Wanda keeps her eyes on the heels of the Captain’s booted feet. Pietro’s walking in the odd sideways way he perfected after years on the street, after years where he walked a half-step behind her and to the side, after years of shielding her through crowds and riots and mobs on the way to school.
He glares over her head - eyes on the fallen enemies all around, on the team members who came back but who he doesn’t trust (but then, Wanda supposes, he’s never really trusted Natasha) - but his body faces hers, his chest brushing against her arm with every step. His fingers tangle with hers gently and as they board the quinjet he tugs her gently to a corner.
Seated, with a blanket around her shoulders and a thermos of tea, she slowly lets herself relax.
Gradually Wanda’s breathing slows. Tea may be full of caffeine, but Wanda’s as inured to it as they both are to the sounds of bombs and riots: it doesn’t stop her sleeping. Her head rests on his shoulder the blanket around her shoulders and his, and he twines his fingers more with hers as they fly.
He doesn’t know where they’re going, but he knows better than to hope for safety. The Avengers compound was supposed to be safety. America was supposed to offer some semblance of safety. Even when the Accords came in there was supposed to be a clear way out. There was supposed to be fairness.
Pietro looks down at his sister, at the burns on her neck, at the bruises and rubbed-raw skin on her wrists and knows that there is no place in the world safe for his sister.
Wakanda is their safe haven for a week. Just one week. T’Challa can’t have it be more, and they’re tucked away in some far outpost where Barnes returns to cryo under his own steam and the rest of them recoup. Natasha seems to spend half the time on the phone with Maria, transatlantic costs and timezones be damned, and by week’s end she has a multitude of fake IDs for them all. Steve spends half of it making sure he knows what’s going on with Bucky, and the other half being beaten half to bruises by Sam.
He never really does bruise though, and Wanda imagines that’s due to the serum.
Pietro stays at her shoulder, unflinching, never failing.
Pietro knows how things are with his sister. She never wants to worry him, so she will not say anything if she thinks it's unnecessary. She also trusts him enough to let him see her weakness, even if she dares not speak of it, and she knows that he will do what he can.
Except, he doesn’t know what to do with this.
She leans into him in a way she hasn’t since after the bomb, since the first few days of their powers. The way she does when she no longer feels safe in her own skin. She rubs at her wrists so much the redness barely recedes and she can’t bear to wear any of her old necklaces, even the ones he gave her. She can’t even wrap them around her wrists until the rawness there goes away and its worrying to see his sister without the myriad adornments she’s always worn.
It’s strange to see his sister uncomfortable in her own skin, and for the life of him he can’t imagine why.
It is on their final day in Wakanda that Vision finds them. Wanda would wonder how, but she knows Vision. Knows the stone in his brow and its link to her powers, and more than that she knows the strange affection he holds for her. Sometimes they’ve wondered if its because of the stone and her powers, but they doubt it - Pietro and Vision only get along half the time and her brother’s powers came from the exact same source as hers.
“I’m sorry,” he says, as soon as he lands. There is not a moment’s hesitation. “I heard about what happened.”
Pietro’s at her shoulder, his eyes on Vision but still angled to protect her. She rests a hand on her brother’s wrist, frowns sideways up at him until he steps back just a little.
“Do you mean the Raft?” she asks. “Or what happened at the Raft?”
Beside her Pietro goes as solid and silent as a rock.
Half of him is screaming. Half of him is silent. What happened at the Raft. It had never occurred to him that something might have happened in those scant few days before he helped to break her out.
“Both,” says Vision. His eyes are his strange bright green and fixed earnestly on Wanda’s face. “I do not have the words for how sorry I am for what happened.”
Slowly, things click into place. The marks on her wrists though she was locked in a straitjacket. The way she still flinches from any touch but his. The silence.
The way she is uncomfortable, un safe , even in her own skin.
He wants to hit himself for not seeing it, but it is Wanda. No one in all their lives has dared to hurt her. First they were orphaned children, and he was ever at her side. Then, when he was less able to be there, she was a street witch, feared and respected. Then the experiments - Strucker and List refused to let any guards near, only techs. They did not want to risk the twins’ loyalty.
The Raft didn’t care. The Raft had Wanda in a collar.
He is blind, he is deaf, all he can hear is his heartbeat and the screaming of his mind at how utterly he has failed his sister.
Then, gently, Wanda’s hand slips into his.
Vision leaves. He presses a small phone into Wanda’s hand, but makes no fuss when the Captain asks him to leave lest Stark start to wonder. Always Vision’s way, Wanda thinks - that of peace and what pacifism is possible. He knows already, knows after she fought him at the compound, that there is no way in the world they will return to America’s clutches without a fight.
“Wanda,” Pietro whispers, and her thumb is gentle over his knuckles.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. She does not say, Eventually.
Pietro, as ever, hears it anyway. “I’ll kill them,” he says. Soft and deadly certain. Wanda doesn’t doubt he would. He had said the same when Clint had shocked her.
Instead, she shakes her head. “No,” she says. “There’s no need.” She lifts her gaze to meet his, and they are close enough that only he can see the tiny spark of red in her pupils. “We’ve already ruined their prison.”