Novi Grad, Sokovia
Spring 2015
It was after dark when Pietro returned to the apartment, and he was beginning to feel the strain of being on the move all day. Between scouting out potential places for them to hide out, looking after his twin and their new companion and running, err, errands, it had been a long day. And despite his abilities, he was not impervious to fatigue.
Regardless of how tired he felt, he managed to plaster a smile onto his face as he gathered up the bag of supplies he's acquired for the three of them, carrying them into the kitchenette where Wanda appeared to be making tea of some sort. With power, gas, water and so on cut to the building the same time it had been condemned and the few remaining tenants evicted, they'd had to improvise a few basic amenities to make the apartment even halfway comfortable. A small portable camp-stove that Pietro had found currently sat on top of the regular stove while a somewhat worse-for-wear old 5-gallon water jug sat not far away on the counter. He'd been sincerely tempted to pick up something nicer, but he knew better than to test Wanda's disapproving stance on his 'shopping' habits.
There was little doubt that she knew where he got the things he brought home. But they were rather limited for options. They had no money, no jobs and the prospect of getting either through legitimate means was rather slim at the moment. They were both wanted, after all. Which was why he suspected Wanda hadn't said a word of warning or censure about Pietro's acquisition of supplies; it was their only option just now. Because of his abilities, it was far easier for him to stay off the radar than Wanda, which was why Wanda had been staying close to the apartment with Nina while Pietro had been the one to venture out.
Not that it was the only reason she preferred to stay behind. No, the main reason Wanda had been sticking to the apartment was Nina.
The slight blonde had gotten worse since the base fell and Pietro had whisked her and his twin away from there. Her muscle spasms had gotten more intense as the first night in the unheated apartment had passed, her reaction to the Sceptre's power exacerbated by the damp chill of the early spring nights in Sokovia. She'd barely gotten any sleep thanks to how badly her body had been shaking and tensing, and what little she'd managed had been fitful as her fever would ease before worsening again. And that wasn't even taking into account the aches and pains wracking her body, or of the headaches that made even blinking draw whimpers of pain from her.
It brought up memories already far too close to the surface for the Twins. They both remembered going through the exact same thing, though to Pietro the physical pain that had burned throughout his body had been by far the worst part, while Wanda had revealed to him once they'd been allowed back in each other's company that for her it had been the headaches, the sensation getting progressively worse until she'd been almost beyond feeling them. It had gotten so bad, she said, that she'd nearly believed someone had opened up her skull with a sledgehammer and stuffed needles and burning pokers and razor wire in with her brain before closing it all back up again.
She hadn't even been able to cry or scream at the agony of it, the effort proving to only make it worse.
She still had nightmares from it, the intensity of the phantom pain prickling and clenching through her mind. Just as for Pietro it still raced and wrenched through his own dreams, causing his joints to feel like they were once again clenched in iron vices being twisted impossibly tight as his very blood felt like it was simultaneously freezing and boiling through his veins. Thankfully, bad as they were, the nightmares would always pale in comparison to the original experience. It was something to be grateful for, that was for sure.
And they were beginning to fade. Slowly, as night after night passed, Pietro was finding the old nightmares from the day they lost their parents re-emerging from where the memory of Strucker's experiments had exiled them. It was almost a relief, bizarrely enough, to be confronted with reliving those horrible two days after reliving the Sceptre's effects on their bodies. Wanda had been a wreck the first time her nightmare from those days had returned, not because it was worse, per se, than the experiment dreams, but because the old, familiar nightmare had returned. She'd been so conflicted over the realization that she'd barely spoken, even to Pietro, for days. He'd been far more accepting, the small, secret part of him that looked forward to the nightmares relieved when they'd returned. Not only because they reaffirmed his reason for putting himself through the experiments in the first place...but also because the dream always started with those few, happy moments before the first shell had struck, when his mother had been teasing him for not wanting to eat, well, he couldn't remember what exactly...it was something different each time.
It was with a wan smile that Wanda looked up to him as he approached, her shoulders relaxing with relief when he pulled out the medications he'd broken back into the base to retrieve—painkillers mostly, and a few others that he had recognized from his own treatment immediately post-treatment—when it became clear that Nina's symptoms weren't getting any better. Wanda had been hesitant when he'd suggested going back for them, fearful of somehow making it worse thanks to their own lack of medical training, but as Nina had gotten worse...
"Thank you," she breathed, taking the bottles and the small kit of syringes from her brother and kissing him gratefully on the cheek before returning to Nina's side. Though tempted to follow, part of him wanting to see that his attempts to be helpful had paid off, Pietro stayed in the little kitchen, picking absently at the disintegrating countertop as he waited for the kettle Wanda had been watching to boil.
It wasn't long before it did, just as it didn't take Wanda long to return to his side, her features still pinched with worry even if not to the extent that they'd been even a few minutes before.
"How is she," Pietro finally asked warily as he handed the mug he'd just poured the fresh-boiled water into to Wanda, grabbing up a waiting teabag from the counter and dropping it into the mug as he looked to his twin. Wanda bit back a worried sound, worrying her lip as she took over fiddling with the tea bag while he prepared a second and third cup, a second teabag going in one and a waiting packet of instant chicken soup going into the second.
"Not good," she admitted softly after a moment, putting her tea down and taking over preparing the cup of soup, adding in her own herbs and other ingredients to steep in the broth before looking up to Pietro. "But no worse off than we were at the same stage. They said we were like that for over fourteen hours," she hesitated, glancing first back to their fitfully sleeping companion before looking to the clock she had propped on the counter next to the now useless fridge, "and she's about eleven into it as we speak. It should ease overnight." Though her voice was firm, there was an undercurrent of anxious doubt to her words that Pietro didn't miss. She was afraid that Nina wouldn't make it past this stage...the stage that had killed most of the other volunteers who had made it past the initial exposure to the Sceptre's energy. Pietro's nodded absently, forcing a semi-confident smile to his face as he brushed a lock of Wanda's hair back from her face.
"Then only another three or so hours to go," he said with an assurance he was pretending he felt. Another wan smile pulled at Wanda's lips, a trace of gratitude flickering across her face. But then she sighed heavily, fingering the handle of the mug meant for Nina as her eyes betrayed her suddenly conflicting thoughts.
"We've got to keep moving," Wanda said finally softly, looking to but not seeming to see Nina. Pietro glanced toward the blonde himself before looking back to his twin. "They're going to be looking for us, especially since we engaged the Avengers." Pietro scoffed, earning a faintly reprimanding look from Wanda.
"They won't catch us, even if they do bother to coming after us." Wanda's admonishing glance turned distant and thoughtful again before focusing for real on Nina. And anxious, worried sound escaped her throat.
"Eventually they will trace us back here, and we need to be gone before they do." Pietro was tempted to scoff again, but restrained himself at the genuine worry on his twin's face. He doubted anyone would be able to track them to this apartment.
True, they'd lived here before the experiments, but they'd been careful even then to keep themselves off the grid; they'd figured at least one of them had a warrant for their arrest out there somewhere thanks to the protesting they'd done against the government. So they'd always paid their rent in cash and had chosen a building where the landlord had little interest in documenting who his tenants were so long as he had them. And now it was abandoned and virtually falling down around them. Even as Pietro was contemplating that, at the very least, no one would be able to follow him back to the apartment, Wanda was turning her solemn blue-green eyes back to him.
"And when we do finally move, she is going to slow us down." It was a pure statement of fact, but Pietro bristled regardless.
"We couldn't leave her behind," he snapped out before forcing a self-assured grin to his face, "besides, they'll be expecting us to move quickly. We'll throw them off by moving a little slower." He paused again before grinning for real. "Not that we'll be moving that much slower," he added cheekily. It almost drew a smile from Wanda. She glanced at him again, a worried light growing in her eyes.
"But they know we have her with us. They'll know we won't be able to move as quickly, even if they don't know her condition." Pietro frowned.
"Why would they know we have her?" he questioned, a defensive note making its way into his tone, earning a startled but impatient look from his twin.
"You went and got her, Pietro. The Avengers or someone else is bound to look at the cameras—you know, the ones Strucker had on the isolation cells to observe us?—and see you getting her. You had to slow down to pick her up, yes? Even if you didn't, no one can move as fast as you. Whether the cameras caught you or not, they'll make the connection that you're the one who took her from the cells." Pietro could feel his face fall; she was right. But he brushed it off.
"And what would it matter to them, anyway? She had nothing to do with any of it." Wanda's worried expression deepened, her brow creasing with it as she looked up at him, her eyes flickering with hesitation.
"I—I don't know," her voice wavered as she turned back to Nina again, causing Pietro to glance to her as well. The blonde was huddled on the couch, arms sandwiched between her curled legs and her shaking body. She looked for all the world like a crashing addict, with deep, harsh shadows beneath her eyes and a sickly, ashen cast to her cold-sweat coated skin. He wasn't sure anymore of her body was still fighting the Sceptre's power or adjusting to the changes it'd made. For a split-second, he could almost swear the air around her seemed to waver, but he wasn't certain enough to believe he'd done anything but imagine it. He couldn't remember precisely when his or Wanda's powers had begun to manifest, but he was fairly certain it was too early for that to be the case.
Wanda was already looking back up to him, her blue-green eyes swimming with uncertainty, her voice wavering with it as she began to speak again, "I—I don't know if taking her with us, away from the base, was the right thing anymore." Pietro started, eyes going wide as disbelief jolted angrily through him.
"What do you mean? How could you say that? You know what would have happened to her if we had left her!" Wanda winced, her eyes lowering with distress. She knew exactly what Pietro was alluding to. Nina would have disappeared, perhaps to a secret cell, perhaps for good, all for something she'd had no control over, for something that had been done to her against her will. She looked entreatingly back to Pietro before her head finally dropped to her hands.
"I don't know," she gasped, sounding on the verge of a panic attack. In an instant Pietro's anger had faded and he was pulling his twin into his arms, a low, comforting hum coming from his throat as he held her shaking body close. She hadn't had a reaction like this in weeks. They'd grown common for a short time as she adjusted to her powers, especially when the telepathic aspects became too much to bear, before she'd been able to gain a measure of control over the ability. That she was reacting like this? It told Pietro that, whatever was troubling her had to do with the disjointed fragments of other people's thoughts she'd inadvertently picked up on...about Nina.
"I think they may have been looking for her," she finally murmured into his chest. Pietro frowned, once again growing defensive.
"Who? The Avengers? For Nina? Specifically?" She nodded as her fingers curled unconsciously into his jacket.
"That person Strucker and the woman spoke of, Rykova, who was with the Avengers? I didn't get why, but the woman was sure she was there for Nina..." she trailed off, glancing up to Pietro as he tensed. "No," she blurted, eyes going wide as she realized how he'd taken it, "no, not for a bad reason...I—I think, maybe, this Rykova might have been there to rescue... Oh, I don't know!" She rested her forehead against his shoulder. Unconsciously Pietro ran a hand soothingly up and down her back as his thoughts began to race. "I only got fragments. I don't know what the Avengers wanted with Nina." Though he refused to let it show on his face, Wanda's admission troubled Pietro. The idea that leaving her behind would have been better for her was suddenly gnawing at the back of his mind. But he pushed the thought away. It was too late for that now. Now, the three of them were looking out for each other, and Pietro had no intention of leaving Nina behind. And he knew Wanda felt just as strongly.
Placing a comforting kiss on the crown of her head, Pietro leaned back in order to catch his twin's eye, plastering a confident, reassuring expression on his face.
"As soon as she's doing better, we'll move on. Okay?" Though the breath she inhaled was shaky, there was a stubborn set to Wanda's jaw and a determined glint resurfacing in her eyes as she nodded in agreement.
"Okay."
A/N: Thanks for reading!
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