Work Text:
Fear. Fear in a handful of dust.
This is fear: curling close with all the family that you have left, watching the bomb that you know, in your heart of hearts, down to your very bones, is going to explode.
This is fear: clutching your brother’s hands blindly, the only light coming from the one thing that will inevitably kill you.
This is fear: waiting, with each shift of the bricks, with each fresh shower of dust, for your deaths.
This is fear: enduring all of that at ten years old.
The twins grow like vines, strong and flexible, wrapped around each other like parasitic figs, feeding from each other’s strength.
They grow like Kudzu and Lianas, coiling up and around not just each other but the growing ruin of their city, their Novi Grad.
They grow up afraid and learn to act not just because of that fear.
The twins know what fear is.
(Fear is a child’s handful of brickdust.)
(Fear is a bomb, lying in the rubble.)
When they are twelve fear is this: hungry bellies, cold rooms, no certainty but each other.
When they are thirteen fear is this: knowing they might be separated at any juncture, knowing that others do not trust their closeness to be only siblinghood.
When they are fourteen fear is this: the new party in power, trying to hunt down Jews and Roma and all else they do not like, just like those that killed their grandparents.
(Fear is this: giving up the practices they’d kept for Mutti and Vati even as they no longer believed.)
(Fear is this: a thing backed up by anger.)
When they are fifteen fear is this: blood on Wanda’s hands and teeth, human flesh caught beneath the nails of Pietro’s fingers, his own blood seeping out of his scalp.
Fear is this: knowing that, wherever they go, they will be hated.
“Mutti!” Pietro screams, coming out of nightmares. “Vati!”
(This is the only grieving they allow themselves anymore - single moments snatched between waking and sleeping.)
(For Pietro, this is fear: the moment between waking and Wanda’s hands pressed to his cheeks, her eyes meeting his.)
Fear is this: not knowing if the smoke in the sky is a bonfire or an arson attack, tear gas or a chimney.
Fear is this: going to find shelter each night and not knowing if they will find it.
Fear is this: what they see in other’s eyes when they name Wanda a witch.
“I hate this,” Wanda says, face tucked into her knees, curled on the stone floor of the old church. “I hate everything.”
Pietro’s hands are gentle as they take hers, eyes are watchful as he sits cross-legged before her. “Hate everything, then,” he says, and lifts her hand, presses a kiss to her knuckles. “Except us. We are all we have.”
(Fear is this: knowing Pietro speaks nothing but the truth.)
Fear is this: not knowing if their jobs will be able to pay their wages.
Fear is this: not knowing which of their friends they will lose each day.
Fear is this: the adrenaline of every riot and protest, the rush it gives, turned bitter as they run from the police.
“Is there a point to this?” Wanda asks, letting brickdust filter out of her fist like sand through an hourglass. “Fighting? Nothing ever seems to come of it.”
(Fear is this: knowing that when Wanda thinks like this there is only he to pull her from it.)
“Maybe,” Pietro says. “We can’t know if we don’t try.”
Fear is this: their hearts beneath their sternums, beating like a rabbit’s feet against the ground.
Fear is this: hearts in their throats, watching the other being clubbed down.
Fear is this: anger, restrained only by worry.
(Fear is this: knowing one day even their fragile safety will crumble down around them.)
“I hate this,” Pietro says, cradling his head as Wanda cleans his scalp where a baton split the skin.
Wanda knows he has a splitting headache, that the cut on his nose is the precursor to a full-blown black eye, that he is this way because he refuses to see her hurt.
(Fear is this: knowing that one day Pietro might die to protect her.)
Fear is this, fear is this, fear is this-
Fear is everything. Fear is all they’ve known since they were ten.
(Apart from each other. They’ve always been able to rely on each other.)
(“You and I, we Maximoffs,” Pietro had whispered once, holding Wanda when she shook free of a nightmare. “We have each other. That is all we will ever need.”)
(Fear is this: knowing they can never let themselves need more than that.)
(Fear is this: knowing everyone, even their friends, are a risk.)
(Fear is this: them, against the entirety of the world.)
“We can help you fight,” the man in the labcoat says, bracketed by soldiers.
(Fear is this: wanting to believe what he says.)
“We can make you better, give you weapons to effect real change.”
(Fear is this: that which drives their companions to the castle.)
(Fear is three words, spoken by a stranger: “We need volunteers.”)
(Fear is this: that which keeps them from agreeing immediately.)
“You wanted to fight,” Wanda tells Pietro.
“You wanted to make a difference,” Pietro replies.
“Do you believe them?” Wanda asks.
Pietro’s answer is simple. “Do you?”
(Fear is this: the reason Pietro trusts Wanda to decide everything for them.)
(Fear is this: the reason Wanda will not ever let herself make a mistake in deciding.)
They choose the castle. Crunch through snow and woods, up the hill and old stone path, until they can look down upon the city of their birth, the city that was-is their home.
They choose the unknown, to place trust in a stranger.
They will fail us, Pietro’s eyes say when they meet Wanda’s.
I know, Wanda’s gaze replies. But we have no better option.
Fear is this: going through the experiments together, but being trained apart.
(Fear is this: not knowing if he can stop running.)
(Fear is this: not knowing if her scarlet will hurt her brother.)
(Fear is this: not knowing if they will be forbidden from being together.)
(More than that fear is this: the chance that they could hurt each other.)
“Pietro!” says Wanda, running to her brother.
“Wanda,” breathes Pietro, crushing his sister to him in a hug.
They breathe each other in, the medical scents from the experiments, the odd scents of the scrubs-robes they were given, the dust of the cells they were locked in and beneath it all-
The scent they know as family.
Wanda’s eyes glow red, a fiercer certainty than Pietro has ever seen. I will not allow them to part us again.
In her hand he lets his begin to blur, show just how fast he can run now. Wanda understands the unspoken words: Nor will I.
(Fear is this: that despite their new powers they will still be parted.)
Fear is this: being locked into cells each night, enduring nightmare after nightmare alone.
Fear is this: not knowing if what they learn to do each day is enough.
Fear is this: The Battle over the Potomac, the news that these they are with are Nazis and that the Avengers will hunt them down.
(Fear is this: the risk of losing their vengeance making them stay with people who would kill them.)
“I wish we had a better choice,” Pietro says. “I wish we did not have to chose this.”
“So do I,” Wanda says, taking his hands in hers, looking out of the tower window to the woods and the city below. “But after all that has happened, what choice do we have?”
(Fear is this: Pietro bowing his head to Wanda’s hands because he cannot see another path.)
Fear is this: tests after tests, blood and bone and skin taken from them and not knowing where it goes.
Fear is this: the whispers of those who call them assets, who would not put them in the field.
Fear is this: going through so much for vengeance, only to have it taken from them.
(Fear is this: the castle shaking around them, the shouts of soldiers, the warnings of the Avengers.)
(Fear is this: the adrenaline in Pietro making him shake, Wanda’s hands nervous in his as they disobey orders.)
Take care, Wanda thinks to Pietro running.
Stay safe, Pietro thinks to Wanda while she waits.
We can do this, they think, their only singing certainty.
We have to do this.
Fear is this: Wanda’s uncertainty if taking down the Captain instead of Strucker was the right choice.
Fear is this: watching the man they have hated since childhood come so close to taking that which awoke their powers.
Fear is this: what Wanda put into the heart and mind of Tony Stark.
(Fear is this, to Anthony Edward Stark: everyone he knows and loves dead or doomed.)
(Fear is this, to Anthony Edward Stark: watching them die, unable to do anything.)
(Fear is this, to Anthony Edward Stark: seeing this, and knowing it is all his fault.)
(Fear is this, to Anthony Edward Stark: something needling in the back of his mind, making him decide differently than he might have.)
“What now?” Pietro asks as they walk the streets of Novi Grad. “Where to? America? To take on the Avengers?”
Wanda’s hand is gentle on her brother’s arm. “No,” she says. “No, we wait.”
“Are you sure?” Pietro asks. “How do you know what you did-”
“I know,” she says. “I know my powers like I do you. Do you trust that?”
Pietro lets out a breath, his shoulders relax. “I trust,” he says simply, “In you.”
Fear is this: the streets, and everyone in them.
Fear is this: knowing they will find a safe space because now, now they are feared.
Fear is this: the unknown, and a man made of metal.
(Fear is this: the thing which makes hope feel like the first breath of fresh air since they were ten years old.)
Hope is this: a risk they have never yet allowed themselves.
Hope is this: something bright and warm and delicate as Pietro’s hummingbird heart in his breast.
Hope is this: something which illuminates the vast space of Wanda’s cathedral mind, showing every shadow.
(Hope is this: something dangerous.)
“Are you certain?” Pietro asks before they leave the castle with Ultron. Wanda’s hair is pulled up into a high ponytail, back from her face making her cheekbones stand out, making her look like a queen.
In the end, Pietro thinks. She will rule all of this.
“He is Stark’s destruction,” Wanda says. “I am certain of that.”
That will have to be, Pietro knows, enough.
Hope is this: shining and bright, as strong as Wanda’s scarlet.
Hope is this: recklessness, and the strength to leap up again.
Hope is this: something chased by the biting teeth of fear.
(Fear is this: that it will not work.)
(Fear is this: what Wanda must put into each of the Avengers’ minds.)
(Fear is this: what makes Wanda do it.)
Fear is this, to Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard: the end of days, Ragnarok and the deaths of every Aesir and Vanir he knows.
Fear is this, to Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard: his own powers turned against his own kind.
Fear is this, to Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard: a dread prophecy made certain to come true.
To Steven Grant Rogers, fear is this: nothing left to fight for.
To Steven Grant Rogers, fear is this: nothing left of the one thing he yet knows he can do.
To Steven Grant Rogers, fear is this: no purpose left, none at all.
Fear is this, to Natalia Alianovna Romanova: that which she was trained to.
Fear is this, to Natalia Alianovna Romanova: to have a place in the world, fixed and held and binding.
Fear is this, to Natalia Alianovna Romanova: her trauma made open to everyone.
Fear is this, to Clint Barton: someone’s fingers in his head, remaking them to something he is not.
(Fear is this to Pietro Maximoff: his sister’s pain, bolting into his mind like lightning.)
I am here, I am here, I am here, Pietro’s mind sings, all his soft cool blue, bright and burning except under the soft golden light of Wanda’s cathedral mind.
(The cathedral is cracking, the synagogue showing through beneath the stone, warm wood, warm and growing like the tree of her brother’s thoughts.)
Wanda’s head pounds, aches, makes it so she almost cannot see.
“I want,” she says, “to finish the job.”
(Fear is this, to Bruce Banner: Betty dead, by his hands or Hulk’s.)
(Fear is this, to Bruce Banner: that which will make him become the thing he hates about himself, to try to keep it from happening.)
Fear is a myriad things and it is none. Fear is their hearts in their throats, the feeling of metal fingers against their faces, is how it feels when they hold hands so tightly the bones of their hands grind together. Fear is hunger, fear is thirst, fear is tiredness and worry and nightmares and every moment they are not at each other’s sides.
(Fear is a child’s hand, full of brickdust.)
Hope is this: peace and quiet, and the hope it might continue.
Fear is this: peace and quiet, and the knowledge it will end.
Hope is this: apprehension at a new future.
Fear is this: apprehension at what this new future will bring.
Fear is this: the world remade in fire and dust at the hands of a metal man.
“ No!” says Wanda, when they are away from the lab, and she is raging, raging and grieving, hope gone over into fear, and it is all Pietro can do to hold her and assure her she is not to blame, that she could not have known. “I hate him,” she says. “I hate everything.”
(In this moment, fear is this, to Pietro: knowing that when Wanda thinks like this there is only he to pull her from it.)
“Hate everything, then,” he says, murmured into her hair, his arms wrapped firmly around her shoulders, lips pressing briefly to her scalp in a kiss. “Except us. We are all we have.”
(In this moment, fear is this, to Wanda: knowing Pietro speaks nothing but the truth.)
Fear is this, to them both: knowing Pietro spoke the truth but that they cannot hold to it.
Wanda’s eyes when they look to Pietro’s say the same words she has said before. What choice do we have?
(Every choice, Pietro would have said. Every choice but fear.)
Fear is this: the knowledge of what Ultron has planned, seared into Wanda’s brain like the memory of the shell.
Fear is this: Pietro’s worry for his sister, as brightly burning as his protectiveness has always been.
Fear is this: what they feel knowing Ultron will do more and worse than Tony Stark ever did.
(Fear is this: Wanda’s hand, full of brickdust.)
“You cannot trust Stark!” Wanda wants to scream. You cannot trust him, you cannot trust him, look at what he made!
But she is to blame for what he made, she who reworked his mind to worry more, to discard logic, to focus on fear. She is to blame too. She is the reason her brother is half keeled-over against a wall, trying desperately to catch his breath.
“Ultron cannot tell the difference between saving the world and destroying it,” she says instead. “Where do you think he gets that from?”
Fear is this: sitting on a plane with the leader of the Avengers and wishing the plane will go faster.
Fear is this: the bitter taste in their mouths that overrides even their vengeance as they go to face Tony Stark at last.
Fear is this: knowing there is something more important than their vengeance in the world.
(Fear is this: the idea of giving up the vengeance that has driven them for so long.)
Fear is this: Ultron’s creation waking up.
Fear is this: Ultron’s creation attacking.
Fear is this: Ultron’s creation taking their side, agreeing to fight alongside them.
(Fear is this: hope.)
Fear is this: coming home only to watch its entire destruction.
Fear is this: trying to help people, save lives that they put at risk in the first place.
Fear is this: failure.
Fear is this, to Wanda Maximoff: a battle, caused by her own actions.
Fear is this, to Wanda Maximoff: a handful of dust, caused by her own choices.
Fear is this, to Wanda Maximoff: knowing nothing she will ever do can make amends.
“Step out of those doors and you are an Avenger.”
Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe, Wanda.
“I can handle this. Come back when everyone else is off, not before.”
Fear is this, to Pietro Maximoff: battle, building around them, and knowing he has not the time to pull his sister from her mind.
Fear is this, to Pietro Maximoff: knowing that everything they do here could end their lives, could end Earth, could mean they don’t come back.
Fear is this, to Pietro Maximoff: being made to leave his sister in the midst of battle and risking her dying apart from him.
Fear drives them, makes Wanda’s scarlet use it’s pure chaos to tear to tattered pieces the sheer metal order of Ultron’s drones.
Fear drives them, makes Pietro’s speed enough to tear apart the drones, to give his punches enough strength and force to shatter them.
Fear drives them to be heroes, drives them to what could be their deaths.
Pietro feels them, the bullets digging into his body, every last one, in his ribs, worming their way into his body like fear.
“You didn’t see that coming” is easy to say, words waiting on his tongue already.
I’m sorry is easy to send, all his love to Wanda before he isn’t there to offer it any more.
Pietro Maximoff slumps to the ground, brick dust and rubble beneath his hands.
Fear is this, to Wanda Maximoff: screaming so long and hard she feels as though her throat will bleed.
Fear is this, to Wanda Maximoff: rubble and rock pressing into her legs and her hands as her scarlet curls and snarls and screams out of her like a torrent of blood.
Fear is this, to Wanda Maximoff: fear, in a handful of dust.
Fear, Wanda learns, is this: living the rest of her life completely and utterly alone.