Honeybee | Wanda Maximoff {AU}

Chapter Three: Bombini

Music is "Love Lies" by Khalid feat. Normani.

Picture is Civil War High School AU by Arielle Jovellanos & Janet Sungart (jovaline and janetsungart on Tumblr).

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Apinae Bombini

Commonly known as bumble bees, Apinae Bombini are social insects that form colonies with a single queen. Female worker bees can sting repeatedly, being one of the few genus to be able to do so. They are found all over the world and are recognized by their furry or fuzzy appearance. The weight-to-wing ratio is still a mystery to scientists, and no one can say for sure how A. Bombini is able to fly.

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Chapter Three: Bombini

"Tell me, Carol. I need to know."

"All right. Finish your breakfast. I'll spill on the way to class."

Our table talks about other things over the remainder of the meal. Over the half-hour, I learn a lot about each of my classmates, mostly that Tony Stark has daddy issues and that Carol is the best person I could've met my first day back. Part of me is surprised that I never ran into any of them in my first year at Violet Hill, but the other part isn't so shocked. None of them are in my degree, and I didn't start living on campus until this semester. Before that, I lived at home.

But I don't have that anymore. Hal's accident made sure of that.

Carol claps a hand on my shoulder and grins at me. "Ready to head to class?"

Tony waves us on before I can sign a reply. "I'm getting something to go. You gals go on ahead."

"We were," Carol smirks.

Tony rolls his eyes. Pepper, Rhodey, and Vision remain back with him, while Bruce scurries off to another part of the cafeteria. I grab my backpack and sling it over my shoulder as Carol and I head for the classroom in Building 616.

"Wanda immigrated with her twin brother Pietro just before high school," Carol starts, keeping her voice low enough so only I can hear it. "They came from Sokovia as part of an asylum project. Sokovia has been fighting civil wars for nearly twenty years. It's a tiny country over in the Balkan area. Y'know, Romania, former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, the eastern bloc."

"With their parents?" I sign.

She shakes her head. "Their parents died in Sokovia after a bomb went off near their apartment. The building collapsed, killing their parents and trapping the Maximoff twins."

Curses fly through my head, and my attention shifts to my feet as we walk into Building 616. Empathy for Wanda and her brother surges within me. I know what it's like to lose your parents in a war; I lost my entire family in Lebanon after a radical targeted the hotel they were staying in. My mother, father, and three younger siblings: all of them died because of some mad-man with a vendetta. It's the reason I left Beirut when I was barely twelve.

"They were put with a foster family for a while," Carol continues, "but they ran away after the guy started threatening Wanda. Her brother took them both, and they lived on the streets for a while. Eventually, Pietro got a job at some warehouse on the coast, and Wanda got her job at the local occult shop. She still works there."

"What happened to Pietro?" I sign, having using the sign for "brother" and the letter P to symbolize "Pietro."

Carol bites her lip and hesitates at the entrance to our math classroom. "There was a robbery at the warehouse where he worked. Being the idiot he was, Pietro tried to stop it. He got shot. He's been in a coma for almost two years."