Disappeared- {Pietro Maximoff}

Chapter 2

Waking up from a deep sleep is extremely different to waking up from a nap. With naps, there is an awareness that you are waking up, a gradual understanding of where you are, what is happening and indeed, who you are.

When you awake from a deeper sleep, it is more of shock. Your senses are heightened, ten times stronger than they normally are and your brain does not hesitate before leaping to the worst possible conclusions. An abrupt awakening from a deep sleep is even worse because your heart quakes and you are both fully and not at all aware of what's going on.

Alex startled awake.

She was half sat up before she was even aware of being awake and after a few laboured breaths, Alex lay down again.

Her eyes were half-open as was her mouth. Her tongue felt heavy and when she tried to lick her cracked lips, she found herself unable to. There was a shrill sound and below that was a low humming noise that Alex slowly recognised as being from a fan.

There was only one thought in her mind, the name of someone she remembered knowing but didn't fully recall, Pietro.

Her eyes fully opened before squinting in the blinding sunlight, repetitive drumming in her head. She tried to speak but her mouth was as dry as a desert and the only sound she could make was a strange coughing noise that hurt her ribs.

She lay there, licking her lips and trying to speak when the door flew open and Tony entered the room, muttering to himself and writing stuff down on his tablet.

"Tony," she croaked, her voice barely audible as she silently bore the pain that came with speaking.

"Tony..." She repeated, louder this time and Tony turned to look at her, shock written across his face.

"Alex?"

<<>>

Steve and Natasha were checking on a witness, Tony had explained, and both Bruce and Thor were missing. He hadn't mentioned the twins so neither did Alex.

The first thing Theundruk had told Alex when she'd woken up inside the stone was that Pietro Maximoff had died. Alex had removed the bullets too late and he had not been able to heal. The next three months of training Alex did, stuck inside Theundruk, was only due to her determination to avenge Pietro.

Everyone in Sokovia had lived, a rarity in the Avengers line of work and Alex could have cried when she found out that Pietro was dead. She didn't, Theundruk had already begun stealing her emotions by then, but the announcement that she had failed in protecting him had hit her hard.

And now he was alive, potentially, if Theundruk could be trusted. Now Alex couldn't even do that, after how close she and Theundruk had gotten in the three months they'd spent together, it had all been ruined by the stupid lie.

Theundruk had even made her a prosthetic hand, out of god knows what, when Alex had confessed in training that she wanted a hand but knew she would only be given a weapon in the real world.

"What are you thinking about?" Tony asked, removing the thermometer he'd stuck in her mouth.

"I don't think, you know that, Zietto."

"So we made it twenty minutes without a lie, good job."

Alex stuck her tongue as Tony wrapped a bandage around her left arm.