Novi Grad, Sokovia

Spring 2015

She might as well be dead. She couldn't feel, she couldn't think, she could barely breathe. She was the walking dead.

She was as good as dead.

She simply couldn't be alive anymore.

Her heart had been ripped out just as surely as though the organ itself had been violently torn from her chest, leaving a bleeding, gaping hole. How did anyone survive that? She was empty, hollow. There was nothing left.

No. That wasn't entirely true.

There was a deep, low throb of grief lodged like shards of red-hot iron deep in her gut, echoing the way her heart used to beat. But even that she could barely feel.

She still had a modicum of purpose, though. A shred of focus left to her. There was one thing she had left to do. As she collapsed in on herself, the physical manifestation of her overwhelming pain and grief and rage waning having burst free in a devastating wave—shredding everything in its path, every sentry, every soulless extension of that god-forsaken robot—her eyes had lifted to the sky. The pure, pale blue sky. A little part of her had even supposed that she could nearly, nearly see the brightest stars beginning to show through the blue.

It was a pretty, utterly disconnected thought.

She had seen him falling. The robot they had so mistakenly placed their faith and trust in. The robot who promised them vengeance but had instead only presented them with damnation. The robot who thought fixing—cleansing the world meant destroying everything.

The robot who had just slaughtered her other half. The robot who had just murdered her heart.

He had killed Pietro.

She had felt it. She felt his fear and desperation.

She had felt the searing pain as the bullets tore through his body.

Then she'd felt nothing.

A great, gaping, blank hole where his vibrant, bold, stubborn mind should have been.

It matched the hollow, aching hole that had been torn into her own chest.

When they were children—eight or nine; their parents had still been alive—she had fallen down the stairs of her building, breaking her wrist. It had hurt more than she could've ever imagined. It had been agony. Pietro had been distraught. She'd even heard their mom telling their father that he'd tried to make himself fall the next day, so that he would break his wrist too. Their mother had thought it had been for attention. She had known better. It had been so she wouldn't be going through the pain alone.

He'd barely left her side the entire time she'd been hurt, part of him guilt-ridden that he was unhurt, part of him not understanding why he didn't feel it too—they'd been so close until then that they might as well have been the same person. He had believed he should have been in pain too, just as she was. She had believed it too, but his presence had helped, his presence soothing the pain, sharing it even if he couldn't feel it directly.

But this?

The pain of that small fracture paled in comparison. It seemed so minor, so insignificant now.

Especially since Pietro wasn't there to even try and share her pain...because this time he was her pain.

He was gone.

Her twin was gone. She had nothing left.

Wanda looked up to where she'd watched Ultron—inconsolable and all but mad with grief as she had been—as he was thrown down from the sky.

Slowly she got to her feet. She didn't even realize she'd begun to move. She was just moving, setting one foot in front of the other, each step taking her closer to the one who had destroyed everything she cared about.

A twinge—a horrible, wrenching twinge—vibrated where her heart had been, reminding her that they had chosen to follow him.

That Wanda herself had allowed Stark to take the Sceptre that had birthed Ultron into the world.

Her flesh, her very bones hurt as the realization prickled and tore through her body as she trudged closer to where Ultron waited for her.

It was all her fault.

Pietro was—he was gone because of her.

Another scream of pain and rage and grief tried to claw its way up her throat, but it died before it could reach her lips.

She didn't have the strength or the will to even cry out her anguish anymore.

She only had the strength to find Ultron, to look him in the eye as she...what? She had nothing left. What could she possibly do that would make any difference to alleviate the hollowness she felt? The pain? The sorrow?

The guilt...

She could rip him apart.

It wouldn't change anything, she knew that, but it would let her feel...something.

Satisfaction, maybe. Or at least something close to it.

But she still felt she had to. The compulsion was beyond thought, beyond focus, beyond intent. It was necessity. It was a final task.

There was simply too much to feel to do anything else.

So she felt nothing instead.

It was appropriate.

She had nothing, so she felt nothing.

She was empty, so she felt empty.

At least, that was what she tried to tell herself to distract from the strength of the grief and anguish roiling and twisting in the pit of her stomach like a riptide.

So she just walked.

When she finally saw Ultron, a small, distant part of her felt nothing but satisfaction. Vindication, even. He looked how she felt; limp, broken, shattered. Utterly destroyed.

She could suddenly breathe again.

She had purpose again.

She wanted to destroy him.

She wanted to hurt him.

She just wanted the pain to go away...she wanted it to end.

Her skin began to tingle as she stepped onto the streetcar where his broken body lay, incapable of moving. The scarlet nimbus that was slowly becoming as familiar to her as her own reflection was forming in curling, glowing wisps around her fingers; caressing, comforting.

Not that she recognized herself anymore.

As she stepped onto the ruined streetcar, she caught a glimpse of herself in the scuffed chrome finish near the driver's seat. Even distorted as it was, she could still tell it was her reflection, but she truly looked like something inside her had irrevocably changed. Like her life, her heart had just been irreparably shattered. Broken.

Utterly destroyed.

Her hair was limp and tangled, her skin pale and colourless. Her eyes flickered between a dulled blue-grey and a vibrant, vengeful scarlet. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and ash and sticky, drying tears. But her hands didn't tremble, and the throbbing deep in her gut had steadied into a firm, urging ache. Her face may not have changed, but part of her didn't even recognize herself. Perhaps it was her expression: grim, focused...anguished...

...utterly destroyed.

As the visible manifestation of her powers flickered and danced forebodingly around her fingers, her feet continued to carry her forward. Until she was next to Ultron's prone body. It was only then that her feet stopped, and she lowered herself to her knees next to him. Her attention was fixed unwaveringly on his fractured, mangled face. He stared back. As she approached his gaze hadn't wavered. Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't tell what he was feeling; his face was far too damaged. But he seemed almost...concerned. Sad, even. Sympathetic. The rage building in the pit of her stomach intensified. She didn't want his pity.

She wanted his pain.

"Wanda," he murmured, "if you stay here, you'll die." Bile and tears rose in her throat, trying to choke her as the emptiness in her chest throbbed.

"I just did," she said softly, her voice just as hollow and merciless as she felt. Her head tilted, considering him. "Do you know how it felt?"

And she ripped his core right out of his chest, the orb slamming into her palm as the gleaming scarlet tendrils of her power wrenched it free the way her own heart had been torn from her body. She watched as the light faded from his human-like eyes. The trembling need in her gut stilled, her eyes dropping to the core in her hand. Hydraulic fluid oozed over her fingers, dripping to the floor. She looked up to him as the last flicker of life faded from his bionic eyes, vindication humming through her body.

"It felt like that."

And the core dropped from her fingers with a dull clank. Her fingers were coated with thick, black, fluid.

And she felt nothing again.

Until something in the air shifted.

And she was aware again.

As the world lurched around her, her chest clenched, caving beneath the pressure of realization.

...The Core.

She'd left it undefended.

She'd failed in her mission, and around her the city began its final hurtling descent.

All at once she couldn't feel her own body around her. Wind whipped and roared around her, drowning out the way her pulse echoed in her ears. She couldn't breathe. As the city was propelled toward the ground, she was paralysed by the sheer elemental force of the fall. She couldn't have moved even if she'd wanted to.

But she was oddly okay with that.

Then a pair of arms pulled her into a cradling embrace. For a split-heart-wrenching-second she thought it was Pietro, either coming to whisk her to safety...or to join him. But it wasn't, and her chest was once again empty and aching. She felt utterly and completely detached from herself as Thor's Vision gathered her up. She couldn't seem to process what he was doing.

And then he was soaring away with her safely held in his arms, leaving the city behind. But it didn't wholly register with her. She couldn't process why he'd come for her. Or why he was taking her away. She could only frown in confusion as suddenly the air was clear again.

That frown only deepened as he settled onto what felt like land again. Around her voices began to speak, but she couldn't focus on what they were saying.

Something was tugging at her thoughts, like she was supposed to notice something. Something important. Something her mind had been unconsciously—desperately—searching for the instant it had been lost.

Something necessary to her. Something vital. Something precious.

She barely noticed when Vision set her down, steadying her as her knees nearly went out from beneath her. She barely noticed as he began guiding her through the Helicarrier toward the ship's infirmary or when a S.H.I.E.L.D. medic took over from the android.

She didn't even register Nina lying unconscious nearby, her mother watching impassively from the slight blonde's bedside as Wanda approached. Nor did she register Hawkeye's careful, concerned gaze following her, or how Captain Rogers and Black Widow stood like watchful shadows at the edge of the room.

She noticed nothing but the still form lying prone directly in front of her. Her focus narrowed on him and him alone to the exclusion of all else.

All she could focus on was that small, flickering sensation tickling at her mind, urging her toward a single, vibrant, impossible truth.

It was only when she saw him that realization seared through her like a bolt of lightning.

Suddenly she felt too much. It was all crashing in on her. She couldn't separate joy from grief or relief from rage. Anguish mingled with euphoria as her heart was suddenly and painfully crashing around within her ribcage again. She felt like she was about to break apart, like her body was about to shatter into a million pieces, like it couldn't contain the sheer eruption of emotion bursting from the centre of her chest.

And then she was placing one foot in front of the other, each step slow and surreal. Distantly she could feel her entire body shaking, her hands fluttering like leaves in a storm as she reached out to brush her fingertips against his face.

Warmth poured through her, the sensation seeming to wake her from a deep sleep. As hot, wet tears began streaming down her face she was sinking onto the cot next to him, curling herself around her twin, pillowing her head against his chest so she could hear his weak but steady heartbeat.

As the first sob tore from her chest, the pressure building beneath her collarbone finally easing, she couldn't help but smile.

Pietro was alive.

She was whole again.

A/N: Thanks for Reading!

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