The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 26

Novi Grad, Sokovia

Spring 2015

It was after dark when Pietro returned to the apartment, and he was beginning to feel the strain of being on the move all day. Between scouting out potential places for them to hide out, looking after his twin and their new companion and running, err, errands, it had been a long day. And despite his abilities, he was not impervious to fatigue.

Regardless of how tired he felt, he managed to plaster a smile onto his face as he gathered up the bag of supplies he's acquired for the three of them, carrying them into the kitchenette where Wanda appeared to be making tea of some sort. With power, gas, water and so on cut to the building the same time it had been condemned and the few remaining tenants evicted, they'd had to improvise a few basic amenities to make the apartment even halfway comfortable. A small portable camp-stove that Pietro had found currently sat on top of the regular stove while a somewhat worse-for-wear old 5-gallon water jug sat not far away on the counter. He'd been sincerely tempted to pick up something nicer, but he knew better than to test Wanda's disapproving stance on his 'shopping' habits.

There was little doubt that she knew where he got the things he brought home. But they were rather limited for options. They had no money, no jobs and the prospect of getting either through legitimate means was rather slim at the moment. They were both wanted, after all. Which was why he suspected Wanda hadn't said a word of warning or censure about Pietro's acquisition of supplies; it was their only option just now. Because of his abilities, it was far easier for him to stay off the radar than Wanda, which was why Wanda had been staying close to the apartment with Nina while Pietro had been the one to venture out.

Not that it was the only reason she preferred to stay behind. No, the main reason Wanda had been sticking to the apartment was Nina.

The slight blonde had gotten worse since the base fell and Pietro had whisked her and his twin away from there. Her muscle spasms had gotten more intense as the first night in the unheated apartment had passed, her reaction to the Sceptre's power exacerbated by the damp chill of the early spring nights in Sokovia. She'd barely gotten any sleep thanks to how badly her body had been shaking and tensing, and what little she'd managed had been fitful as her fever would ease before worsening again. And that wasn't even taking into account the aches and pains wracking her body, or of the headaches that made even blinking draw whimpers of pain from her.

It brought up memories already far too close to the surface for the Twins. They both remembered going through the exact same thing, though to Pietro the physical pain that had burned throughout his body had been by far the worst part, while Wanda had revealed to him once they'd been allowed back in each other's company that for her it had been the headaches, the sensation getting progressively worse until she'd been almost beyond feeling them. It had gotten so bad, she said, that she'd nearly believed someone had opened up her skull with a sledgehammer and stuffed needles and burning pokers and razor wire in with her brain before closing it all back up again.

She hadn't even been able to cry or scream at the agony of it, the effort proving to only make it worse.

She still had nightmares from it, the intensity of the phantom pain prickling and clenching through her mind. Just as for Pietro it still raced and wrenched through his own dreams, causing his joints to feel like they were once again clenched in iron vices being twisted impossibly tight as his very blood felt like it was simultaneously freezing and boiling through his veins. Thankfully, bad as they were, the nightmares would always pale in comparison to the original experience. It was something to be grateful for, that was for sure.

And they were beginning to fade. Slowly, as night after night passed, Pietro was finding the old nightmares from the day they lost their parents re-emerging from where the memory of Strucker's experiments had exiled them. It was almost a relief, bizarrely enough, to be confronted with reliving those horrible two days after reliving the Sceptre's effects on their bodies. Wanda had been a wreck the first time her nightmare from those days had returned, not because it was worse, per se, than the experiment dreams, but because the old, familiar nightmare had returned. She'd been so conflicted over the realization that she'd barely spoken, even to Pietro, for days. He'd been far more accepting, the small, secret part of him that looked forward to the nightmares relieved when they'd returned. Not only because they reaffirmed his reason for putting himself through the experiments in the first place...but also because the dream always started with those few, happy moments before the first shell had struck, when his mother had been teasing him for not wanting to eat, well, he couldn't remember what exactly...it was something different each time.