Title: the lights spark and flicker.
Fandom: MCU—Wandavision.
Characters: Wanda, Vision, Pietro.
Prompt: Correct.
Rating: M.
Length: 1509.
Content warnings: Spoilers for 1x05 Wandavision. Contains mentions of death, mind control, catfishing.
Author’s notes: Title is from Au/Ra’s "Panic Room."
Summary: He’s not her Pietro.


He’s not her Pietro.

But she’ll take him.




.





He hugs differently. His arms are long and gangly. She fits against his chest like he’s overgrown and she’s still waiting for her growth spurt.

Wanda ignores how he doesn’t feel right in her home. Like oil trying to slim out into being a thin sheet of water.

"Remember when I was taller than you?" she murmurs against his chest.

"Sure," he says quietly, American accent making him sound insincere. She only hugs him tighter, wanting to squeeze the sincerity out of him.

Pietro holds her—not tightly, not securely. His hands press against her spine and she can hear his mind countdown to when this will be over.




.




She waits for the accent to slip up to tell her he’s here, he’s really, really here.

She’s been waiting for several days with no beacon.




.




It’s nice to see him run.

Kicking off at super speed, Wanda watches as he disappears in a blur. The air around her ripples. The hair on her arms rise. But she doesn’t feel the same rush of adrenaline, the spark she’d feel as her other half takes off in flight, faster than the human eye could ever see. She was always able to see him. No matter where he went, how far he ran away from her, she could always see him.

"I can see you," she tells herself quietly, trying to will it into existence. Clearing her throat, she says firmly, accent deeply American, "I can see you."

She’s surprised when he appears before her, grin too wide, too unfamiliar. She smiles and clasps her hands against her chest.

She tells herself she feels at peace. She feels like she’s standing on the doorstep of a home that’s she’s been told is hers.




.




His quiet snores used to lull her to sleep, reminding her that he was there. Always in a pattern of I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

The house is too silent. Wanda tiptoes down the stairs to the living room where he sleeps, bundled up on the couch, wanting to remind herself that he is here. His silver hair glows in the moonlight of the open windows and for a moment she believes he is.

She stands to the side and watches him, willing a sound to escape his lips to tell her that he’s here.

He’s buried in silence, too far for her to reach.

Nowhere for her to reach.




.




With Vision at work and Pietro walking the boys to the childless park, Wanda sits in her kitchen with her head in her palm as she thinks. Nothing about him feels familiar. Nothing about him is familiar. Her Pietro is clumsy at best, teasing at his worst.

Closing her eyes, she inhales deeply. Summoning the heat of magic from her core, she pulls him forth from her memories. Feels him burn alive inside of her, tendrils of her magic creating the shape of him in the black abyss of her recent memory.

The doorbell rings.

When she opens her eyes, she smiles. Pushing herself up and off the chair quickly, she skips over towards the front door and swings it wide open.

Her face falls.

"Forgot my key," her Pietro doesn’t say. He pushes past her and she feels nothing. No spark, no familiarity, just an arm that is an arm attached to a body that isn’t his.

Pulling her smile tight across her face, Wanda nods. "Of course."

The laughing track deafens her.




.




Every evening after he’s asleep, she slips into his mind, tickling her fingers against his thoughts. She searches for a familiar pathway broken up by craters healing in the ground. She searches for Sokovia, of a house with two large windows, the breeze knocking a tree against the glass.

She finds nothing of home.




.




Vision sits at the kitchen table, head bowed, his eyes no longer warm when he looks at her. She wipes his memory from time to time, pulls at the happiness that lingers deep within the dry well of him. Sometimes he forgets his anger, his rage, his pain. She remembers how limp his body had felt in her hands, heavy and boneless. The imprint of that ghost frightens her.

Wanda’s at the sink, washing the dishes slowly. She looks down at the bubbles and wishes to drown.

"Your brother…" Vision begins and pauses. His tone is tentative, a different sort of skirting around her that she’s begrudgingly become used to over the last few weeks. Wanda lets herself breathe, grateful this episode will lack a fight. "I don’t know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but Wanda… Your brother is nothing like I imagined."

Tugging in a breath, she feels it disperse inside of her. Relieved he can see it. He can see her. She feels the weight lift from her arms.

Turning the tap off, she twists around and leans against the bench. Vision looks frightened. He never means to hurt her.

"I know," she says. Something in her crumbles. The show is over with a quiet click, rolling credits floating on the black abyss of an ending screen.

The chair scrapes loudly as he’s quick to come to her. His arms are solid and warm as he holds her limp body. She tucks her face into his chest and cries.




.




Before she unfurls his clothes to pop them into the washing machine, Wanda lifts Pietro’s shirt to her nose. Searches for those familiar scents of spices and wood, the subtle fragrance of burnt threads.

She buries her face into his shirt and only smells dense, frightening smoke.




.




Vision sits on the edge of the bed, dressed in his checkered pyjamas. They’re silver and red, the colours of her and Pietro.

A lump settles in her throat as she runs her hands through her long hair.

"What are you going to do?" Vision looks at her, fingers drumming nervously against the bedspread.

She lets out a breath through her nose. "Let him go," she says, voice feeling thick. Sokovian accent breaks through her shields. Looking down, she struggles to swallow through rubble. "I have to let him go. He’s not my brother."

Vision’s face falls in sympathy. "I’m sorry you have to make that sacrifice, Wanda. I really wanted it to be him."

Smiling sweetly at him, she pulls the bedsheets up and tucks herself under it. "It’s okay, Vis," she says, wrapping herself in her cocoon. "I have it handled."




.




She cuts out the footage of her long lost brother’s triumphant return from her sitcom. That kind of storyline has never done well with ratings, anyway.




.




For the first time since he rang her doorbell, she invites him for a walk to the supermarket. He’s always been better at pushing carts, something she knows from the surface of his mind, the thought floating like debris. He seems happy, thrilled with something familiar.

She reaches for Pietro’s too-big hand and grips him tightly. Magic embeds itself into his lifelines, seeping into his veins to mangle his blood. She can feel herself slowly taking him over, blood running along the pathways of his insides to his heart.

She smiles at him, lips feeling thinned. "I’m very glad you’re home."

Pietro smiles at her genuinely for the first time since his arrival.




.




When Pietro sleeps, she slips away, magic transforming her into a torpedo. She runs so fast the red in her hands and the base of her feet burn silver.




.




Standing at the barrier of Westfield, Wanda wonders briefly if Hayward is out there. Waiting, watching, wishing to send another drone to infiltrate her bubble. She won’t let him pop it. She won’t let him have what will be the complete set of her perfect life.

Bare feet spread and digging into the damp earth, she holds out her hands, palms up, and closes her eyes. Red tendrils of magic curl around her legs, wrapping like vines along the trunk of her tenacious tree. Swirl up to the branches of her arms until she can feel it burn her eyes and mouth.

She sobs as she pulls from him, the gangly boy with bright silver hair sleeping soundlessly on her couch.

She holds her arms out, waiting. Calls for him, shooting magic through the barrier, out of the dome, across S.W.O.R.D.’s tents and people. Zips over water quickly and digs into the Sokovian earth.

When she opens her eyes, her arms are heavy. Limp, weightless, cold. Home. Pietro. She brings him forth, patches the broken bits of his skin. Feels the bullet in his chest give way. She lets the silver killer drop to the ground by her feet where it kisses her foot.

Wanda smiles down at her brother. His slack face is wet with her tears. "You’re home."




.




She has everything she could ever want. Two dead men: one home, one heart. An imprint of their boneless, heavy weight in her arms that she will never feel again.