i feel an ache where my mind was
The first time she felt it was the day he died.
She'd felt the severing of their connection ripple throughout her entire body, the sensation similar to that of an elastic string stretched too tight. The phantom recoil of the snap made her skin prickle with a thousand tiny needles and suddenly her mind, usually buzzing with thoughts and memories and feeling, was deathly silent.
Wanda had connected the dots quickly, the restless buzz of her brother's conscience suddenly absent where it normally festered at the edge of her own.
Since the tragic death of her parents and the destruction of their home, Wanda's emotions had always been heightened, but this was a different level of feeling. Wanda felt hollow for only a moment before she was consumed by anger and grief, her swirling chaos magic rising to a boil in her chest.
Both her body and the ground surrounding her shuddered at the utter force and volume of her wail, red spewing in ever direction as she dropped to her knees. In a matter of seconds, she'd all but disintegrated over two dozen of the Ultron-powered bots that had managed to corner her in her time of vulnerability.
But she didn't notice.
No, because suddenly, she was disoriented. Not only from the death of her brother, but because of the images rapidly flashing behind her eyes. They were all images of her, but they weren't... memories. She had never lived through any of these sequences.
Flashes of a fully grown Wanda laughing and smiling with her mother and father and Pietro, or with happy, boisterous kids, faces smaller and fuller versions of her own, or flanked by a man with smooth ivory skin, soft blond hair and blue eyes. There were more disturbing moments, too. Snippets of her cowering in dark shadows and rocky places surrounded by what could only be sorcery and witch craft.
The most unsettling of them all, however, had to be the one of her staring straight into a cracked mirror. She peered curiously at her reflection. A more mature version of herself, with lighter hair and sharper cheekbones. Her eyes were dark and almost hollow and she wore an intricate red crown, the sharp twists and cutoffs of the headpiece keeping her long hair from her eyes. She was hauntingly beautiful, but it was not her appearance that was unsettling.
It was the curiosity and recognition in her eyes as she peered at herself in the cracked glass. She breathed deep and her eyebrows furrowed. It was as if she was sensing something, someone. She tilted her head to the side ever so slightly and the glass seemed to crack just the slightest further.
As Wanda came back to her surroundings, she could feel a subsequent tingling all over her body and a tug at the back of her mind. It was not familiar.
It was not Pietro.
This was a different sensation entirely. Instead of Wanda actively seeking out a connection with her chaos magic, it was as if something was prodding at her consciousness. Something sinister and wanting. But just as soon as the feeling was there, it was gone.
She didn't have much time to dwell on the feeling then, as the death of her last living family member seemed to snatch the last of the air from her lungs and suddenly all she could see was Ultron, a lifeless corpse at her feet, his mechanical heart in her hand.
By the time the Vision had carried her near limp form back to the quinjet, she'd forgotten about the occurrence almost entirely, instead feeling an overwhelming numbness settle in the pit of her stomach as she cradled her lifeless brother's head in her lap.