It wasn’t that he wasn’t fast enough.
It wasn’t a miscalculation, or exhaustion, lack of time, or whatever else the others had theorized.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t fast enough; it was that he hadn’t wanted to fast enough.
He knew exactly what he was doing when he saved Barton and that kid; he knew the consequences when he ran out there. He didn’t tell them that.
The day he left the bleak white walls of the infirmary was met with slaps on the back, bright smiles, and ‘glad to have you back’s. He was hugged tightly by Wanda and he hugged her back just as tight. Barton gave him a hug of his own, made some joke about not seeing this one coming, and threatened to kick his ass if he did anything as stupid as that again.
He had laughed. He had made no promises.
They told him he was an Avenger now, officially.
They told him that he could start training with the rest of the team, start suffering through press meetings, that he could party with the big boys now.
That night Stark threw a ‘Look-Whose-Not-Dead’ party because being alive was always something that should be celebrated with friends, loud music, and a lot of alcohol, and “you’re old enough to drink, right kid?”
He was the guest of honor which meant he had to wear a stiff itchy button up shirt and Wanda had dragged him to meet all the people she had met a month ago; a whole night of “this is my brother Pietro” and “Pietro, this is James Rhodes, Sam Wilson, Jane Foster, a friend, a friend of a friend, blah, blah, blah.” He drank more than he should have. He was pretty sure that he wasn’t supposed to be able to get drunk but he found himself slurring his words, found himself relaxed, calm.
Wanda hadn’t left his side the entire night. Not once when he was being congratulated on his heroics, his sacrifice, his bravery. She squeezed his hand when he got too quiet, coaxed grins from him when his smile wasn’t quite up to par; she filled gaps in conversation when they lolled. He was eternally grateful.
It was nice, fun.
He was an Avenger now; this was what Avengers did.
Later the night when their guest dwindled down to just the Avengers and their dates – Pepper Potts could strike the fear of god into the hearts of men just for not using a coaster and he thought that it was pretty awesome – Stark had pulled him aside.
Stark smelled like the inside of a whiskey bottle and he had a big dopey smile, rosy cheeks, and glassy eyes that made Pietro want to laugh because he was sure if he looked in the mirror he’d look the same. He was too drunk to remember that he was supposed to hate the man when he shoved a glass of his finest something or other into his hand and slurred to him that he was now an honorary member of the ‘Almost-Died-For-The-Cause’ Club.
Party of three.
Congrats, kid.
“Wait, who’s the third member?” he asked, his own words running together like he was speaking in cursive. He blinked, trying to remember if he’d asked that in the right language, especially since Stark had just stared at him blankly for a second too long.
“Phil Coulson,” Stark whispered to him like it was a secret, like Pietro should know the name. Maybe he should have, maybe it was part of some Avengers initiation that no one had told him about or something. He’d ask Wanda tomorrow about…whatever his name was. He didn’t want to fail a test.
He nodded back dumbly.
Pietro didn’t know how he felt about Stark, even as he refilled his glass before sauntering back over to where Pepper was talking to Rhodey.
He didn’t know how he felt about any of them.
They had helped save Sokovia and its people but they had been the reason they were threatened in the first place. It was so easy to help when it was your fault to begin with.
Romanoff was terrifying in a cool ninja way and dorky in a lame jokes and cheesy movie references kind of way. She stared at him like she knew what he was thinking and he didn’t really like that, but she shared her clothes with Wanda and they talked about what Wanda deemed ‘girl stuff’ (which meant he was no longer subjected to the ‘isn’t that a cute boy…no you can’t fight them’ argument anymore). And she had a pretty decent music collection.
Barton was old and sometimes he was a dick who tripped people when they were running and put hot peppers on their sandwiches, but Pietro was sometimes a dick who steals sandwiches so they were even. And Barton had tried to save that kid, had been prepared to die to protect that kid despite having his own to return home to. He was brave, good with a bow, quick with a comeback, and he had watched over Wanda while he’d been in a coma. Pietro liked him, he trusted him to have Wanda’s back, but he’d never let the archer know that.
Rogers was both the man from the stories he’d heard as a kid and the exact opposite. He was the brave, patriotic idiot that was always ready to fight for those who couldn’t, no matter how insignificant, just like the stories said. But then he was sarcastic, self-sacrificing, and was the only one that could get Stark to shut up…and he let Pietro throw his shield around the gym early so that was pretty cool. It was also cool that he just laughed when the shield crashed through a window.
He was still iffy about Banner, and he thought that he knew it because the doctor kept his distance. The man was quite, good-natured, and funny if you actually listened to him. He kept to himself mostly. The big guy was nice to have on your side, all things considered, but he did threaten to kill his sister.
Thor was loud, wise, and he had a laugh that rattled around in your chest. He radiated warmth, compassion, and kindness; he reminded Pietro of what he could remember of his father. Also he was apparently reigning Mario Kart champion and that pissed off Barton.
Then there was Stark, the man who had killed his parents, had been the cause of all the pitfalls in his life, the driving force behind his anger. The man who’d just invited him into his ‘Almost-Dead’ club and gave him something that made him feel warm.
He was smarmy and sarcastic; a genius who the press loved to hate and hated to love, who caused far too much trouble. But he had offered them residence in his tower, had sent rescue teams and construction workers to what was left of Sokovia to help his people. He seemed like he genuinely cared about this stupid little team, about Wanda, and about him; but Hydra had seemed like they were SHIELD, like they really cared about helping Sokovia, about helping Wanda, helping him.
Looks were deceiving and he wasn’t quite ready to have the wool pulled over his eyes again. Wanda said they could trust them, they could trust Tony Stark.
Pietro wasn’t quite sure.
But it was after all, Wanda who had said that there was something suspicious about the SHIELD agents looking to recruit them. It was he who had claimed that she was just being paranoid, that Captain America worked for SHIELD, they were the good guys, remember? It was he who reminded him that Peggy Carter founded the organization and to remember all her good work during World War II. It was he who had whined, coaxed, and convinced her that they were going to give them shelter, food, warmth, and help them be powerful.
Three days after waking up; because that was what life was now, a series of Afters, after being shot, after being comatose, after being an Avenger.
Three days and Captain Rogers had him on a demanding workout schedule that ran him harder than Hydra ever did, that left him tired and his muscles sore. He hated it, hated it more when he had to drag himself back to his room afterwards.
Rogers had said that it was to improve his fighting skills, with and without his powers. He said it was to quicken his thinking in high-stress situations and it’d help him run faster. It’ll help you dodge those bullets next time.
And please, call me Steve.
Four days after someone shot three bullets at him on the outdoor track.
Later that day he threatened to shove a bullet into Stark’s eye if he so much as thought about trying that again. Cap had given Tony a lecture on why you didn’t do something as fucking stupid as that.
Wanda said, later as they sat across each other on the loveseat in the lounge, that he probably had his reason. She nudged his knee with her toes until he looked at her and told him that Stark probably wasn’t trying to hurt him.
Probably.
Wanda said that Pietro shouldn’t be so grouchy about it until he knew what the reason was.
“Stark has an unusual teaching method,” she told him in a way that made him think that she might have been on the receiving end of those unusual methods. “Unorthodox but effective.”
He wanted to throw those bullets Steve had confiscated at Stark, he wanted to throw them as fast as he could and let him feel the burn of hot metal searing through flesh, organs, and bone at the very idea of him doing something like that to Wanda.
She huffed, pulled her eyes away from where Vision was helping Steve fix a radio, to roll them at him. “He didn’t try to shoot me, Pietro, only helped me get better.”
She told him that he should look on the bright side: he had dodged the bullets.
He wanted to tell her, like he had wanted to tell her since stepping out of the infirmary; that he would have dodged them anyways, that he’d done it before. It was part of his training with Hydra long before Stark even thought to try it. He was not mad that he got shot at.
He wanted to tell her that the problem was that she was in the field next to him, that she could have been hit, that Stark didn’t factor in her safety.
“You’re right,” he said instead, because they weren’t alone. They were never alone anymore. It was suffocating.
Steve said the next day over breakfast that he should start practicing with Stark to improve his speed. Everyone, including Wanda had agreed.
No.
He should have said no, should have said no fucking way and questioned if the Captain had soup for brains and if everyone else was drinking it. The man had tried to kill him the day before.
He nodded instead, swallowing hard against the words that chocked him and decided to save his fight for another day.
He’d lost his appetite.
He was due to meet Stark on the training field at ten o’clock. Steve had said they should start straight away.
The sun was already high in the sky, the air was thick with heat, and Stark was fifteen minutes late. He arrived eventually, carrying a glass of lemonade, a paintball gun, and goggles from his lab.
“Cap said I can’t use real bullets,” he said as way of greeting before tossing the goggles at him. “Wear those, safety first and all that.”
“You’re not shooting me,” he said throwing the goggles back at him.
“Not if you move out of the way, Flash,” he replied easily, tossing them back.
“Captain Rogers would never approve of this.”
“Oh he did,” Stark smirked. “Just not real bullets, considering your track record with them–”
“I can outrun bullets.”
“–And your sister’s scary voodoo magic scares me. Now, run, Forest, run.”
He outran everything Stark threw at him and more for an hour. It was boring, as he complained on multiple occasions while Stark laughed his ass off. It was really boring and easy and then…and then it was red; red at the center of his chest like he’d been punched, shot. There was a lot of red, a lot.
“Gotcha.”
It was a lot of red and suddenly all the oxygen in lungs had disappeared and someone seemed to have stolen the rest of it from the air. They should really get the Avengers on that one, or Phil Coulson, someone.
He’d been shot before, eleven times. And two times before that. Not at the center of the chest though, so yeah, yeah Pietro, gotta breathe man.
This wasn’t like that time, he told himself. It really, really, really, wasn’t like that but then, it kind of was. One of the bullets had nicked an artery that Dr. Cho said was close to his heart and worrisome, that he was touch and go for a while.
Wanda had said she almost lost him the first time he had woken up.
He couldn’t breathe then either.
She had hugged him, wrapped her arms around him like she was going to lose him all over again and it hurt his chest. He couldn’t hug her back, couldn’t bring himself to hug her back.
He had been tired, he told himself later, as she shook and cried and was forced away by hesitant nurses. It was shock or exhaustion; he’d just been too shocked about being alive to hug her back.
The second time he woke up he hugged her as tight as he could for as long as he could, until the nurse gave him something that made him sleepy. Wanda had pushed his hair from his eyes and sung to him softly their mother’s old lullaby.
They said he would have been a goner without his metabolism, they told him Barton lived because of him, that kid was safe because of him. Wanda told him that he could rest easy, that she would be there when he woke up.
The third time, he had cried gripping onto Wanda as tight as he could.
“I’m sorry,” he said in something between a sob and a whisper. He said it now like he had said to Wanda in the hospital bed, like he had said inside his head before saving Clint.
He remembered Wanda wiping tears from his cheeks but not her own. He remembered her telling him that he had been very brave, her hero. He remembered vaguely, like looking at old photographs, the Avengers looking away respectfully when he could not get himself together and then leaving altogether.
They had blamed it on the drugs coursing through his veins, on the realization that he had almost died.
They weren’t right.
He wasn’t crying because he had almost died. He was crying because he hadn’t and it hurt.
He let them believe what they wanted.
“Hey, no kid, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”
The voice filtered over the roaring ocean that was crashing around his skull, something that broke through the red. They were trying for comfort, he noted distantly, with a soft voice and a hand squeezing his shoulder.
But Wanda never called him a kid and no one else ever comforted him. He was older than her, a whole twelve minutes older, and she did comforting with constricting hugs and tiny tremors in her voice.
“Not a kid,” he gasped, voice sounding high even to his ears and seriously, where did the oxygen go?
It was probably Victor von Doom whose stole all the air; he would try something as stupid and inconvenient as that. They should really send Wanda to mess with his head and Hulk to destroy all the doombots, or something. And get umbrellas for the rain that fell down his face.
“Hey, hey, come on, look at me,” the voice coaxed, with a hand on his jaw that pulled his gaze from the red on his chest and into big brown eyes. “It’s Tony, remember? We’re on the training field. The paintballs, right?”
“Tony,” he repeated dumbly.
Tony Stark, he killed his parents. He wore a suit made of metal, he created killer robots by accident and he gave them residence and new running shoes. Wanda said to trust Tony Stark; Wanda was never wrong.
They were practicing on the training fields because he had to go faster. It was hot, bright, and Stark had been late. And…and they used paintballs because Steve said no to bullets.
“Steve was right,” he laughed breathlessly. Cold air stung as it skidded like broken glass throughout his lungs with every shaky breath he drew.
“Yeah,” Tony smiled. “Yeah, Steve was right. We’ll make him a metal or something. You okay?”
“Wanda defeated Doom.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
More than fine, now that he could breathe again; shaky hands wiped the not-rain from his face before he gave Stark a small smile that did nothing to convince the genius in front of him that he was okay. He was fine, really, embarrassed and a little shaky but fine.
“Want to tell me where you went?” He asked. The paintball gun had been discarded and kicked away; Pietro realized that somewhere in the haziness he had lost his goggles. He hoped Stark wouldn’t be too upset about it.
“Training field.”
“No, where’d you go in here?” He asked again, tapping on the side of his head.
“No.”
“It’s better if you talk about it,” he replied, his hand still on Pietro’s shoulder. It felt hot and heavy against his skin, like lead. Pietro didn’t know if it was an anchor to keep him from slipping back into the red soaked panic or to keep him from running away.
He shook the hand off anyways and Stark had let him.
“How would you know?”
“I have been known to have the occasional panic attack every now and then,” he said lightly, as if he was talking about the weather. “It comes with the gig, Speedy. If something hasn’t fucked up yet then I’d be worried.”
Right. Right.
Stark had almost died, first in the heat of the desert and then in the icy cold of space. That was why he had the metal suit and the metal in his chest; that was why he didn’t watch Star Wars anymore. That was why it was so damn difficult to hate him now.
Pietro had forgotten.
“Like I said I’m fine,” he replied with all the control he could gather to make his voice sound calm. It instead sounded cold, monotonous, and tired all at the same time.
God, how he was tired.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
He was gone before Stark could say another word.
Pietro had skipped dinner that night, and practice the next day, and the day after that.
He told Wanda he was just tired, that he had jumped back into everything a little too quickly and needed more time to get used to this whole avenging thing.
And come on, can’t we just sit here…and let’s make up stories like we did in the orphanage, let’s make a fort. Wanda, please? I’ll let you go first.
She relayed the message to the Captain and they all left him alone for a while.
Well, everyone except Tony Stark.
Stark had made it his own personal mission to be everywhere he was and then to annoy the hell out of him. Pietro would be impressed if he didn’t know that Stark was using F.R.I.D.A.Y. to track him. He was in the kitchen if Pietro wanted cereal, the laundry room if he needed to wash his whites. If Pietro wanted to talk to Wanda it was Stark who told him she was on a date with Vision.
They parted ways always on the same words.
“Ready to talk, Roadrunner?”
“Fuck off, Stark.”
He didn’t want to talk, not about Hydra, or Ultron, or Sokovia. And he didn’t want to talk to Tony freaking Stark.
He would not let the man who took everything from him be the one that tried to fix him. He wouldn’t let the man that caused the cracks in his armor be the one to mend them. And he was never ever going to let the man who made the weapon that shattered his entire life be the one to pick up the pieces, not Tony Stark, not anyone.
Those pieces where long gone, left behind when he was pulled from the wreckage, left in that Hydra base and that orphanage, and in bloody droplets in the school yard, on the knuckles of every bully who ever knocked him down, and wiped away with gentle hands in too small bathrooms of shabby apartments. They were dropped in Sokovia, forgotten on the battle field, and destroyed with the rest of it.
What was left rattled around in his lungs and made it hard to breathe.
Pietro learned that if he ran fast enough he could confuse F.R.I.D.A.Y. so then Stark talked to Steve who then talked to Bruce.
Bruce, who was not a therapist as he had mentioned on multiple occasions, came to talk to him armed with hot tea and chocolate candies.
I’m really not that kind of doctor.
Steve’s orders, I know, I’m sorry.
Not-therapist Bruce said a lot of the same things that the Actual-Therapist therapists at the orphanage had said, all the ‘what you experienced’ and ‘talking about it will help’ and ‘this is normal behavior after such trauma’ that he’d heard one hundred times over.
They were always the same questions; he knew how to play the game that got them off his back. He knew how to be the boy that they wanted; he could be the perfect little boy, the happy little orphan boy, the ‘can-I-go-do-my-homework-now?’ little boy. He was better at it than Wanda.
He wanted to hurtle the questions back at him; demand answers to things he could not figure out, that no amount of book-knowledge or Google searches were going to help.
Please do tell, Dr. Banner, how he could possibly talk to anyone about being pulled back from sweet nothingness into a world that was all sharp corners and blinding lights and wind that felt like glass against his skin. How as he supposed to explain to someone that it was so, so, so exhausting being alive to someone who’s never experienced not being?
Why was New York City always moving, why was it so loud, why did the lights never go out and why did no one sleep at night? Why did people come here, Bruce, why were people milling around like this wasn’t some big deathtrap?
He wanted to shout and demand to know what he was supposed to do now that Wanda didn’t need him anymore. He wanted to know when he had fallen so far out of touch that Natasha, and Stark, and Vision had taken his place and why he couldn’t pull himself out of that, why he couldn’t smile like he used to or laugh with ease. He wanted to know why he was tired and why it was so hard to breathe at night.
He said nothing, he asked nothing.
He answered what was asked of him, no more, no less. He was the model orphan boy.
“Do you like it here?” Bruce asked, peering over his glasses in a very therapist-y way.
“Yes.”
“Are you happy being an Avenger?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss your home?”
“Yes.”
“Sokovia?”
“No.”
Bruce, like all the therapists before him, said that he was just having a hard time adjusting. He told him there was nothing wrong with that, that he should just take him time.
Wanda had all that time he was stuck in the hospital to get readjusted to living in America, in Stark Tower with all the luxuries they never had, to being an Avenger. He didn’t have that so it was just taking him a bit longer.
Pietro appreciated Bruce’s opinion and the time he took to pull generic answers out of him for generic questions, and he more than appreciated everyone’s willingness to accept that but it wasn’t right. He wasn’t unadjusted; he just didn’t want to be there.
“So who knew how shit of a therapist Bruce was?” Stark said following him into the locker room and over to Pietro’s locker. He heard a snort from the other side that said Bruce had definition heard him and that he didn’t completely disagree. “I should have known. At least he stayed awake with you, fell asleep right in the middle of, well, the beginning.”
Pietro ignored the rambling genius in favor of discarding another pair of ruined Nikes in his locker.
“I mean, you don’t need a genius IQ to see that he was completely wrong. Am I right or am I right, Speedy?”
“Leave me alone, Stark.”
“Needing time to adjust?” he scoffed like the very thought was absurd. “That’s just bullshit, right? You’re plenty adjusted. He didn’t even listen to me when I said you were clearly not dealing with the whole almost-death issue.”
“Fuck off, Stark.”
“No,” he replied harshly, reaching for his arm but Pietro pinned him to the lockers behind them before he could grab onto the speedster.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled.
“Listen kid,” Tony strained to say when Pietro didn’t remove his forearm from his throat. “Technically, you’re touching me.”
Pietro huffed and moved back to his locker.
“I can’t help you if you don’t get your head out of your ass and accept that you need it,” he said over Pietro’s shoulder. “I know what you’re going through, okay. I’ve been there.”
“No you haven’t!” he snapped back, pushing Tony into the lockers once more. “You know nothing.”
“Is there a problem?” Steve asked poking his head around the corner curiously. He eyed the two of them before settling his eyes onto the younger. Pietro felt like he was caught fighting Wanda’s bullies at recess all over again.
“No problem, Cap,” Tony replied cheerfully. “Just some good ol’ roughhousing, right kid?”
“I already have a father, Stark,” Pietro snapped over Steve’s response about teamwork and working it out with words. “And you killed him. I don’t need another one.”
He didn’t stick around to hear his response.
“So you are seeing my sister,” he mused, sitting down with Stark’s new prototype running shoes, with any luck these one won’t burst into flames like the last ones.
“She is not here.”
“You are dating her,” he reworded lacking up his shoes before fixing the android a look. “You know what I meant.”
“Then yes, I’m dating your sister,” he replied voice flat but curious, and there was a small grin on his face like the one Pietro had seen on Wanda’s when she talked about the android. Clint and Natasha joined them on the jet and strapped in across from them.
“Do you care about her?”
“Mr. Maximoff, I don’t think now is the time to discuss this,” Vision relied crisply. Clint and Natasha stopped their own conversation to listen curiously. “We are about to leave to infiltrate a Hydra base.”
“Wanda is not here, it is perfect time,” he grinned. “You see, I am her brother, older brother.”
“You are twins.”
“But I am older, twelve minutes. And as older brother, it is my duty to grill you.”
“Grill me?”
“Oh yeah,” Clint grinned clapping his hands together. “You know, threaten you and all that. I’m so glad I didn’t miss that.”
“So, Vision,” Pietro cut back in, the smile slipping off his face and a stern look replacing it. Clint laughed, even Natasha cracked a smile. “If you hurt my sister, I will rip out your heart.”
“I am made of synthetic vibranium, I don’t–”
“Fine, but I kick your ass if she cries.”
“I will keep that in mind, Pietro,” Vision replied calmly. “Though I make no plans to do so.”
“If you break her heart she’ll kick your ass.”
“And rip out your heart,” Clint added.
“I am aware.”
“Congrats, man,” Pietro said to him quietly as the Captain and Stark joined them on the jet, in the midst of a debate-turn-argument. “Wanda is great. You make her happy.”
“She makes me happy too.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Wanda asked sitting down next to him.
“Guy stuff,” Clint replied quickly. “You know, sports and stuff.”
The Hydra facility was well armed, which they expected because the scientist inside was apparently a really big deal (Pietro, admittedly, kind of checked out of anything that had to do with Hydra when they went over the details. Outside of run fast and don’t get killed, he didn’t really need to pay attention).
He was on parameter with Stark, he was told to confine the guards to a five foot radius and Stark would stun them so they could be arrested by SHIELD later. Wanda and Vision would get the scientist. Rogers, Barton, and Romanoff just had to deal with the rest of the guards. It was an easy enough plan.
And Hydra couldn’t shoot worth a damn.
Bullets didn’t bother him, not in the way that the needles in the infirmary did or the confining feeling of the elevator bothered him. Bullets had never bothered him, in fact, even before he was shot. Their intentions had always been clear, to maim or kill, nothing else. Not like the needles that Hydra had used with the clear liquids that burnt, froze, numbed, or seized; not like the elevator in Stark Tower that felt more like a coffin that being trapped in the wreckage of their apartment building ever did.
He wasn’t bothered by bullets because he was faster than them.
He was faster than them the moment Hydra gave him the ability to run.
So why – why was this happening now?
A guard had shot at him, a sniper hidden in the grass in some far off place, northwest direction. He had missed and Stark had taken him out before he had the chance to fire again. It was fine, he was fine. He was faster than a bullet, he always had been.
He had even waited. He’d let the speeding metal close enough that he could touch it before he knocked it out of his way. The bullets weren’t the problem.
He’d read up on panic attacks after someone – Tony – slid a bunch of WebMD print outs under his door with a cautious warning that knowing the signs helped.
He knew that the shortness of breath that caused him to stumble to a stop had nothing to do with running. The sudden fear that seized him, the dizziness that made him feel like the world had tipped on its axis; those were signs. The weight that pressed against his lungs, that rubbed against the sharp pieces of his shatter life caught, pulled, and punctured him; that was a sign.
He knew the signs, he had read about them over and over until they were committed to memory. He didn’t know, however, how to stop it from happening and that was the problem.
He felt himself start to shake. He needed to move but his feet felt like stone and his heart sunk with the realization that the guards were probably getting out of the parameter now. He needed to help, to do the task he was given; he was an Avenger now.
He had to help, to move, before he vibrated out of his skin.
“Shit,” someone said over the coms and it had scared him half to death. “Cap? You got your guy?”
“Stark, what is it?” Steve’s voice shouted too loudly inside of Pietro’s ear.
“Petrovich is secure,” Vision stated.
“Minor hiccup,” Stark replied briskly. “I’ll handle it.”
“What is it?” Barton asked.
“Pietro?” Wanda asked over the coms, her voice coming out breathy and worried. “I can feel it. What is wrong? Are you okay, brother?”
“It’s a panic attack, I think,” Stark replied landing heavily somewhere to Pietro’s right. “I’ll handle it just get everyone back to the jet. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Pietro imagined Wanda rolling her eyes at him, imagined her fighting her way to him to hug him like she always did. But Rogers would stop her, or maybe Vision, because Stark said he’d handle it. Wanda was an Avenger now, she had to follow command rather she liked it or not.
He wanted to tell her that he was fine, to stop her worrying, but he wasn’t quite sure how fine he was or how to get the words to form on his tongue.
“Kid,” Stark said pushing up his faceplate so Pietro could see his eyes. “Remember when we talked about breathing? You’ve got to slow that down, can you do that?”
He shook his head so fast that everything blurred together.
“Yeah, you can,” Stark replied. “Just…just look at me. See I’m breathing, nice and slow breathing. Hyperventilating isn’t fun, kid. Come on now, follow me.”
He exaggerated breathing; reminding Pietro of the pregnant ladies in those lame ‘end-of-the-world’ movies he was always forcing people to watch. If he could breathe, he’d laugh.
”You…you look ridiculous,” he huffed.
“Yeah, well you look like your about to launch yourself into space, Jack Frost,” Tony replied quickly, a smile breaking out across his face. “We’re…in a field. I have no idea where we are. Where are we F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”
New Jersey, sir.
“Well it could be worse,” Stark mussed. “We’re in Jersey, kid, in a field in Jersey. Everyone is safe, including you.”
“I know,” he breathed, willing his hands to stop shaking. “I can dodge a bullet.”
“See, those practices are playing off.”
“No,” he said shaking his head, dragging in another shaky breath. And then another and another until it no longer felt like he’d taken a cheese grater to his throat. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Yeah,” Stark huffed out an incredulous laugh. “No one did.”
“I’m fine, now.”
“You’re really not, kid,” Stark replied. “What set you off? The sniper?”
“It’s…no, I don’t know.”
“Because, you know, that’s a pretty decent trigger, literally.”
“I’m faster than a bullet,” he replied harshly before taking a deep breath. “I’m running back, see you there.”
“Wait, no – and he’s gone.”
“Wanda, please,” he whined when there was yet another knock at his door.
He had told her, and Barton, and Steve that he just needed to be alone for a while. And when Wanda refused to move from the other side of the door he told her that missing her date just to hear him snore was really lame.
He promised that they’d talk tomorrow, that he was fine – like Stark said, minor hiccup. Have fun on your date – that he was just going to go to bed.
That was two hours ago.
That phrase had to be repeated three times since then to Wanda, two times to Bruce, and another to Natasha.
He heard the tell-tale click of the door being unlocked and resisted the urge to groan. Except it wasn’t Wanda when he lifted his head from under the mountain of pillows so he did groan, “go away and take your stupid pizza with you.”
“I’m not trying to be your father,” Stark said instead, closing the door with his foot before sauntering over to the bed (Stark always sauntered, it was annoying). “And this is the best pizza in New York.”
“Go away.”
“Did you know your sister is asleep out here?” he asked dropping the pizza box onto Pietro’s leg, along with paper plates and napkins, before sitting down as well. “And you’re eating this pizza.”
“I’ll eat your pizza,” he conceded rolling his eyes before pulling himself up into a seated position against the backboard. “But you go away.”
“No way,” he huffed indignantly. “This is the best pizza in New York!”
“Then take it with you and leave!”
“But I bought it to share,” Stark shrugged, kicking off his shoes and making himself comfortable at the bottom of the bed. “With you, so get over your pity party and eat some.”
“Why?”
“I want to talk.”
“No.”
“Fine, you don’t have to talk,” he shrugged again, putting pizza on a plate and forcing it into Pietro’s hand. “But I am, so listen up, kid.”
“I don’t like you.”
“I don’t like me either sometimes, but I’m still going to talk,” he replied quickly before taking a bite of his own pizza. “I’m an ass, I know. I built the weapon that killed your parents, I know. I’m sorry, but I can’t take that back. You can hate me, its fine, but this, the panic attacks you’re pretending you’re not having, I know those. I know them well and if you don’t confront what’s causing them then Steve’s going to take you out of the field.”
“What?”
“You’re a liability like that.”
“I’m unadjusted,” Pietro replied with a shrug. “No big deal. One time, two time thing. Over, won’t happen again.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I don’t know what caused it.”
“It wasn’t the bullets?”
“Bullets don’t scare me.”
“Why is that?” Stark asked curiously, tossing napkins at him. “You’ve said that before.”
“I’m faster than them,” he shrugged.
“Are you afraid of dying?”
“No, it’s – I don’t have a problem with almost dying,” he replied, his brow furrowing as he tried to find the right words to get Stark off his back. “I do not care that I almost died. It is – it is just…”
“That you didn’t?” Stark asked quietly. All pretense of that billionaire playboy that he flaunted around to the press and to his houseguest were gone, the mask was removed. Pietro wondered for the first time if this was the man Wanda was talking about, the one you could trust.
“It’s not like that.”
“We’ve been practicing for weeks now, kid,” Tony said like that said everything. “And yeah, you’ve gotten faster, but you were fast enough to dodge those bullets I shot at you.”
“The paintball…”
“You were dicking around,” he cut off. “You weren’t paying attention.”
“I saw… I knew I could get Barton and that kid out of there,” he blurted out before sighing. “I knew I could save the day, whatever. I saw the bullets, and… it was a way out.”
“You didn’t move out of the way because you didn’t want to,” Tony observed, his voice was a flat kind of horror, like he was just confirming disappointing facts.
Pietro blinked hard, trying to will the heat away from his eyes. He nodded, not meeting Tony’s eyes, rubbing tiredly at the wet trails the escaped.
“I…I just, uh, I wanted to get out before I failed,” he admitted. “I could be the hero and rest. I’m so tired.”
He laughed, little and pathetic laughter that sounded like a chocked on sob.
“And then I was brought back,” he laughed again, meeting Stark’s eyes. “Fucking Hydra saved the day. I didn’t want to come back. I was prepared; I knew what I was doing, what I was leaving behind. Wanda doesn’t need me now.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to say,” Stark spoke up, a small smile spreading across his face. “That is what you had to accept.”
“Eh? That Wanda doesn’t need me?”
“Yep.”
“You’re shit at pep talks,” he muttered wiping at tears that escaped down his face.
“This isn’t a pep talk,” he shrugged. “It’s a reality check, truth hurts. Wanda’s not some defenseless kid anymore and you’re not stuck in some Franken-Strucker’s castle anymore.”
“Look,” Stark continued, stated like it was fact. “It’s been you guys against the world for a long time and you are too damn willing to be her shield. You live your life one way for so long when there’s a change it rocks the foundation. We came along and it was no longer you two against the world.”
“I love my sister.”
“I’m sure you do, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to have a life of your own.”
“I don’t–”
“Want one? No one wants things to change, but it’s just how life is. Things change, sometimes they suck and sometimes they don’t.”
“None of this seems real,” he stated, not looking at Stark anymore. “None of it. It’s not real. Wanda is happy here, truly happy, and things are so much bigger and worse than ever before. The world is more dangerous that just fucking Hydra, we could survive Hydra, together. Something is going to happen and I’m not going to be able to be there, something is going to break her heart. I can’t watch that.”
“So what, you’re just going to take yourself out of the game before it happens?”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
“The alternative is her watching you die,” Stark stated. “The alternative fucking happened, kid. She was a mess, a fucking hurricane of a mess. You are the most important person in that her life and she felt you die. What do you think would have happened to her if you hadn’t recovered?”
“Wanda doesn’t need me anymore.”
“Wanda doesn’t need a protector anymore,” Tony corrected. “She still needs her brother.”
“I just want to go home,” Pietro replied, his voice cracking on the last word. “I just…I just want to go home. I want to be with Wanda, I want her safe. I’m tired.”
“You can’t go home,” Stark replied bluntly and it felt like a dozen knives being shoved through his heart. “You can’t go home. That idea, whatever it is, being with your parents and happy little twins. It’s not plausible, you can’t have that back. Once those opportunities pass we can’t get them back.”
“You know, kid,” Tony continued, gathering up plates, napkins, and a mostly uneaten pizza. “Home isn’t always a place, sometimes it’s the people your with.”
“We have the training field at ten tomorrow,” he said as he left the room. “Be there or be square.”
Pietro skipped practice. Tony kind of figured he would anyways but it didn’t make it any less disappointing. He did have to get up before noon and that was just yuck.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y. darling,” he spoke up as he entered the elevator. “Take me to Speedy Gonzales.”
Pardon, sir?
“Uh, speedy, Pietro…Maximoff” he responded, wishing that he still had J.A.R.V.I.S. now more than ever.
Of course, sir.
The first thing Tony noticed when the elevator opened on the Avenger commons was the light on in the kitchen. Then it was the commotion, followed by the realization that everyone was in there.
And they were laughing. Without him.
That was just plain rude.
He invited these people into his home and they were laughing in his kitchen without him, at ten in the morning? He was going to disown them, disown them all.
“What is going on?” He asked over the laughter once he stepped into the white powder covered kitchen. “Please tell me Captain America is not doing cocaine in my kitchen.”
“It’s flour.”
“Why is Barton covered in flour then?”
“Speedy’s a dick,” Clint replied tossing flour at the kid, which of course missed because he was too damn fast.
“Wanda and Pietro promised to show us some Romanian cuisine,” Natasha replied. Her red hair coated with white powder as well.
“If it sucks Pete owes me ten buck,” Barton added.
“Mother’s recipe,” Pietro replied sticking out his tongue. “It does not suck.”
“And don’t call him Pete,” Wanda added glaring over her shoulder at the archer.
“Come on Tony,” Steve waved him over. “Watching them is half the fun.”
As if to demonstrate this, Wanda tossed three raw eggs over her shoulder and Pietro zipped around to catch them before cracking them into a bowl. He then tossed the empty shells back in her direction. A levitating trashcan caught the shells before they could hit her in the back of the head.
Tony had to admit it was kind of cool.
“What are you doing, kid?” Tony asked the flour-covered Speedster later as everyone was cleaning up to eat. His voice was just above a whisper to avoid drawing any attention to them.
“Making a home,” he replied before speeding away in a flurry of white powder.
Later that night, he slid a card under the Speedster’s door because destroying his kitchen with flour and sugar and laughing at Natasha’s lame ass jokes was one thing but one day does not fix all problems. And really, relapsed was a bitch, especially if you don’t think it will happen.
His name is Sam. He’s a good guy. It’s a marathon, kid, call when you need it, it helps –T. Stark.