Author's note:

I would have had this up last night but I stopped in the middle to write some Twilight poetry, of all things. Thanks for reading.

xo Serpentina

"He's fast and she's weird." That was the less than clinical description of Wanda and her late brother, Pietro.

Weird. It was such a vague term. Strange, odd, uncanny, abnormal. Weird. Wanda supposed she was weird. How else to describe a person who could do what she could? It wasn't magic. That was for sure. Magic wouldn't have hurt so much. Magic wouldn't have left her writhing in pain or crying herself to sleep. Magic wouldn't have been that waking nightmare. Magic would have been more… magical.

No, it wasn't magic. What had been done to Wanda was science. Cold, hard, sharp, unfeeling science. She had donated her living body to a cause she no longer believed in. What had driven her, kept her alive through all the testing and injections, the torture, was her hatred for the man who had killed her innocence. She no longer believed in that either. Her hatred for Tony Stark had dies the instant she saw the destruction she was helping Ultron to create in her quest for vengeance.

Tony Stark was not her enemy, not anymore. They had fought, first opposed, then together, then opposed again. He wasn't the enemy she had imagined. He was just a man, trying to do good. His name had been on that bomb, the one that kept her locked in fear all those years ago, but the man who made it wasn't the same one who wore that gold and red suit.

With nothing to hate, Wanda had turned to grief. First for her fallen brother, then for a misplaced bomb of her own, and finally for the world that seemed to want nothing more than for her to disintegrate. She retreated into the tower trying to have no more mark on the world than if she had indeed perished with that first bomb.

There was a light in that dark tower, though. A bright, warm gleam of sunshine in the shape of a man. A man who the world called "weird" just as it did her. A man who was beautiful in a totally unique way. A man who was borne of the same mysterious element that caused her powers. He was a man who understood her, who saw her and wanted others to do the same. Even her twin brother, who had been everything to her, never knew her like that.

While he dreamed, he saw red. Whether it was mist, or light, he couldn't decide. What he knew was that it was pure and good and beautiful. As he slumbered, the red watched over him, protecting him, waiting for him. He knew not who, or what he was, but he knew he wasn't alone.

When he woke, he saw her eyes. Those soft green eyes watched him in wonder. He saw other eyes, too, scared, confused, angry eyes, but hers were the ones he had been searching for.

In the end of the battle, after Ultron had fallen, he sensed her falling, too. The city fell and her with it. When he found her, she seemed to resigned to her fate. She would die in Sokovia, with her brother, as they should have originally.

Instead, he found her, floating. Her strength gone, she didn't fight when he scooped her in his arms. He carried her with great reverence. In truth, she weighed very little to him. She became the third human he ever had direct physical contact with save for a few quick blows from Thor immediately upon his waking.

He found himself drawn to her. Even when she was doing nothing more than reading while idly twisting a lock of auburn hair around her slender fingers, she fascinated him. He wanted to understand her, to know her, and, more than anything else, he wanted to lessen the emotional burden she wrapped around herself.

He remembered an adage about "the stomach being the fastest way to one's heart. He tried to cook for her but having no practical experience in either cooking or eating, the food didn't turn out right. She didn't seem to mind whatever mistake he had made with the spices. She seemed to genuinely appreciate his attempt, as inedible as it was.

She even smiled, a real, unrestrained laughing smile. That smile was everything. It was the light he had seen in his cocoon. He had thought the red that had surrounded him was the fire that came from her eyes and fingers, but in that moment when she smiled, he knew he had seen her. She had always been with him, a part of him. Their souls were linked before he even had a name.