VENGEANCE | MAXIMOFF TWINS

↪three.

VENGEANCE
( CHAPTER THREE )

Over the following weeks, I became fast friends with the twins. I learned a lot about them. Small things, like that they both enjoyed paprikash and playing soccer, and big things, like that they were Jewish and they knew they wanted revenge on Tony Stark.

Of course, so did I. I may have been just a child, but in just a few weeks I'd gone from a happy kid to a rage-filled machine with the desire to commit bloody murder. My parents had been killed. How else was I to react? There were no bodies to bury, as they'd been crushed to pure dust. It wasn't fair, that some rich man got to send missiles to a third-world country like ours and just kill some of us for profit. It just wasn't fair.

The three of us bunked in a little abandoned home just at the edge of Novi Grad. It was a little rough around the edges, with boarded-up windows and no running water, but we made it work. At first, Pietro didn't trust me very much. And he had every right to, of course. I was entering their lives in such a horrible way, bonding with them over the fact that we were now orphans.

We spent our days together just sitting and talking. Just Wanda and I, as Pietro was often out in the city stealing food and other various things for us. We'd told him more than once that it wasn't necessary, that he didn't need to steal, but he insisted upon it. He wanted us to remain healthy and well.

One morning, I woke up in the rickety, uncomfortable bed we all slept in together to find Wanda staring at me. I didn't say anything, just lay there. Her hair surrounded her head like a dark halo, and there was a small smile on her lips as she studied my face. It took her a few minutes to realize that I was awake and had caught her staring, and she blushed, her smile growing. "Hi."

"Hi," I replied, biting down on my bottom lip. I may have been just a child, but it took no genius to know that Wanda was pretty. In fact, anyone who said she wasn't would be lying. Her face was all sharp edges, her eyes a deep, bright, glowing green against pale skin. She was like a dark angel of some kind. I didn't have a crush on her, however; I just saw her as pretty.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked me, sitting up lightly as she bit down on her bottom lip. I nodded, and she relaxed a bit. She was always worrying over us, no matter what. She was like a mother hen and we were her little ducklings. "That's good." She looked around, finally noticing that Pietro had gone, and sighed. "He's always getting up so early to steal. Doesn't he know that the markets don't open until midmorning?"

I giggled lightly, shrugging my shoulders. "I think by this point he just wants to get caught." Pietro was always getting himself into trouble. He was so careless with his stealing, and got caught with it so often that we wondered how he wasn't in jail for life.

Wanda smiled and stood, stretching lightly. Her arms extended out to her sides as she sucked in a deep breath. My smile faded. She was all skin and bone; her ribs showed through almost too easily. It was disheartening to see how thin she was, but there was nothing I could do about it. All of us were that thin. We hadn't eaten in ages. We couldn't. We were too poor to legally buy food on our own. The only way we could eat was to steal, even if it was wrong. And with Pietro being the only one doing the actual stealing, we couldn't get much food at a time.

I watched quietly as she changed into the only other piece of clothing she owned: a black dress. All of us only had two outfits, one for during the day and one to sleep in at night. It was all we had left after the explosions. She glanced over her shoulder at me, a smile crossing her lips again. "Like what you see?" she teased.

I blushed, biting down on my bottom lip. "Maybe," I shot back, resting my head on my hand. 

She laid right back down beside me, letting out a light hum. "I like you," she said suddenly, blushing. I paused, my mind suddenly racing. What did she mean? Did she like me as a person? Did she have an actual crush on me? I didn't know how I felt about her. I was just a small child, there wasn't much I could feel.

"What do you mean?" The words slipped past my lips in a small squeak, and the blush that dusted my cheeks deepened from a shade of pink to a deep red. 

"I like you, that's all. You're pretty." She smiled, shrugging her shoulders. 

I opened my mouth to ask her to clarify when the door that led to the outside was shoved open. We looked up to see Pietro standing there, a grin dancing upon his lips. "You'll never believe this," the brunet boy said. "There's a riot going on outside."

I frowned, not understanding what he meant. "What's a riot?" I asked in confusion, my eyebrows knitting together. I'd never heard that word before. Was it something good? I guessed such from the look on his face. When I looked up at Wanda, I noticed she had the same smug grin dancing upon her lips, confirming my suspicions.

"C'mon, Nas. We'll show you."