Worshipping Her Little Spider

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Sokovia
May 2015

Wanda could sense what was coming. Sense it, and do nothing to stop it.

Hawkeye was helpless, only able to turn his back and use his body to try and shield the child in his arms from Ultron’s rain of bullets. With the way Barton had darted out into the open to rescue the kid, no one would be fast enough to reach him before the bullets. No one except for Pietro. Her brother was going to play the noble hero, save Barton and the kid and sacrifice himself. But what about her? After their parents were killed, all the Maximoff twins had left were each other. Now he was going to be gone too, and she was going to be alone.

Impossibly, the bullets never came. Ultron’s hijacked Quinjet came to an abrupt mid-air stop. Pietro and Hawkeye looked equally stunned, each having expected to make the ultimate sacrifice only for it to be rendered unnecessary. Wanda just stared, trying to figure out what had happened. Then she saw him. The new guy—Parker, maybe?—had come up from the other side and used that weird spider webbing of his to stop the Quinjet. That turned Ultron into a sitting target that Hulk easily dispatched, but Wanda had eyes only for Parker.

She’d been skeptical when the fresh-faced young man joined in the battle earlier in the day, especially when he’d told Tony that he was an American high school student who happened to be in Sokovia on a class trip. But his powers were unique and they needed all the help they could get, so the Avengers had made use of him. None of them had known what to make of Parker when he first showed up, but it was obvious that he’d earned everyone’s respect with his performance today. Things could’ve gone so much worse if he hadn’t been there. He’d saved lives without a doubt. And for Wanda, he’d saved her from the heartbreak of losing the only family she had left. There was no way she’d ever truly be able to repay him for that, but she vowed then and there that some day she’d do her best to try.

--

“You kids have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Mr. Stark?” Tony smirked at Peter’s innocent question.

“You’ll figure it out one day, birthday boy.” Then he glanced at Wanda, sitting beside Peter on the luxurious loveseat. “One day pretty soon, that’s my guess.” He walked down the hallway and towards the elevator that would take him up to his bedroom, throwing up a wave as he went. Wanda licked her lips. Finally, just the two of them were left.

“It was really nice of Mr. Stark to throw me this party,” Peter gushed. She couldn’t help but smile. Tony had become something of a mentor to Peter after Sokovia, and the teen’s admiration of him was rather cute.

“You only turn eighteen once,” she replied. “Besides, I think you’ve more than earned it, don’t you? You’re an Avenger.”

“I just do what I can,” he said modestly. His cheeks flushed and his lips broke into this sheepish half-smile that made her want to pounce. Not yet, though. She didn’t want to scare him off.

“And ‘what you can’ is pretty damn amazing, Peter,” she said, reaching over to squeeze his arm. He flinched but made no attempt to pull his arm away. “You’re an important part of the team, and we all appreciate you. I know I feel safe whenever I have you watching my back.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. His normally pale face was bright red with embarrassment now. “You’re much safer working with Iron Man, or Hulk, or Cap, or Thor, or, well, pretty much everybody really. They’re all way stronger than I am.”