Red Assassin ~ Pietro Maximoff x OC

t w e n t y o n e ~ demons

My eyes feel heavy when I wake up, wrapped in a chrysalis of warmth. Pietro's calm, relaxed profile is in front of me as he lays asleep. I brush a strand of his hair out of his eyes and rest my forehead against his. My fingers gently trace the details of his face, exploring what I already have memorized, but will never get over the sheer beauty of.

He's beautiful in the way damaged things usually are. But I don't feel an urge to fix him. He's as broken as I am inside.

Maybe that's what we both need. Someone to understand what it's like to not just be broken, but to be shattered to pieces. Not only to be shattered, but to reassemble. To mend our broken hearts. To see each other as we are and love it anyway, the good and the bad. And from that love, we can rebuild ourselves.

Maybe he's right; maybe I act like everything's okay and put on like I'm this little partier to mask just how much pain I carry around. Maybe it is just my way of closing myself off. But if Anton or Mama or Daddy were here, they'd tell me that that's who I am, the little girl with an innate ability to find the good in anything.

"Feeling better, princessa?" Pietro asks, his voice soft. I nod in response. "Something on your mind?"

I debate telling him what I'm thinking about, but some words are better left unsaid. So I choose to kiss him, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing our bodies together. "I feel...okay."

He smiles, one hand caressing my cheek. "It helped, didn't it. Letting it all out."

I nod, though I hate telling him he's right on account of his massive ego. "It did. Thank you, Pietro." Closing my eyes, I snuggle into him. "But you're nuts if you think it'll happen again."

"I've always been nuts."

"You don't understand." I start feeling numb as a memory from the Red Room surfaces. "In the Red Room, they had an array of punishments for those who cried. On...on my tenth birthday, I cried because it was the one year anniversary of the bombing. They didn't give me food or let me sleep and after two days, while I was, um, sparring with one of the instructors, I passed out." I roll over and lift up my hair, showing him the small, jagged scar on the back of my neck along my hairline. "I landed on a stack of the training knives and I woke up three days later in the infirmary."

I wince as he brushes the scar with his fingertips. "You should have stayed," he breathes.

"You wanna know the truth?" I don't face him again. I can't. "I couldn't face you guys again. I...I couldn't look at either of you or even think of you for the longest time without thinking of the bombing. The...the chalky taste in my mouth, the ringing in my ears. And saying it out loud sounds so selfish and stupid, but it's the truth. I...I wasn't ready to actually face what happened that night. After a while, I just stopped thinking about you guys. It was easier just to distance it all. Probably why it was so easy for them to make me into their killer."

"Look at me." His voice is calm, much calmer than I expected.

"Don't try to kid me, Pietro. Despite last night, I know full well that I'll never be more than the assassin they made me. You can tell me all you want that I can change. I know I can't."

I slide out of bed, moonlight streaming through the window instead of sunlight. Right—we got back to the compound around three yesterday. I went to bed about five or six hours earlier than normal. But Tony's up at all hours of the day. He should be downstairs working.

"Boss, Kat is coming down," I hear FRIDAY say to Tony.

"Too late, FRIDAY, I'm already here." I give Tony a small wave, but he doesn't look up.