11

Chapter 11Summary:

Welcome back Wanda and Pietro, Uncle CLint is waiting for you.

Yelena is tired of walking.

Notes:

сестра = sister

politsiya = police

Chapter Text

The bike started with a very lawnmower like rattle and she let it rattle until it settled into a tinny roar before mounting it. A couple more streets and she turned north, stopping at a gas station for fuel for the bike and she was quietly cheering to herself.

Oh, sure, she knew she couldn't keep the bike for long, but even if she only used it to get to the safehouse? It was worth it.

"Next stop, Rio De Janeiro." She whispered to herself. "I'm coming, сестра , I'll find you."

~~~

July 15th 1999.

Wanda shook her head to get rid of the ringing in her ears, but the sounds of her nightmares persisted. It wasn't until she opened her eyes, that she began to wonder if it was truly a nightmare.

When her brother groaned, she rolled her head to the side to look at him. She frowned as she looked at him, the light barely reaching them as they huddled under his bed.

"Pietro?" She whispered.

"Wanda?" The boy wasn't looking at her but he, too, was frowning.

"Your hair…" She was still whispering.

"The bomb…" The words coming from her brother's mouth, made her jaws clench and her stomach roll. "It… it is wrong…" He muttered, his heavily accented English drawing Wanda's attention to the bomb that was embedded in the floor of their bedroom.

"What the…?" She forced herself to stop.

"That's not a Stark bomb." Pietro tilted his head in confusion.

"Thales?" Wanda muttered. "Who are Thales?"

"I thought it was Stark…" Pietro added.

Wanda looked t Pietro. "What?"

"Nothing…" Pietro focused on the bomb to try and avoid Wanda's 'fingers' rifling through his mind.

"Stark wasn't responsible." Wanda whispered. "It was the man that tried to kill him. Stone, Stane, Stine… something like that." She tossed a mental 'file' at her brother and watched as his eyes widened when he saw its contents. "He sold bombs to Strucker without Stark knowing." Her accent wasn't nearly as prominent as his.

"Sister? Who is… the blonde man?"

"Vision…" She replied, her eyes wide. How had that crept through? She hadn't meant to show him that.

"But…?"

"But what, brother?"

"Wasn't he… pink…?" Pietro grimaced.

"He was red." She corrected.

"Pink or red. He wasn't a blonde white man." Pietro argued.

"He could-" Wanda cut herself off. "Piet? Do you remember him?"

"Of course I remember him, he stopped Ultron." Pietro huffed.

"But…" Wanda looked at the bomb that was only feet from them. "How it this possible? The bomb is not Stark's and we have not lived in this building since we were children."

Pietro looked at Wanda.

"We are children, sister."

"Are we?" She countered. "I remember Strucker, the sceptre and the castle. I remember fighting for, then against, Ultron. Against the Avengers and then for them. I remember feeling you die, then ripping out Ultron's heart. I remember going to New York with the Avengers. I remember training with them, living with them, working with them. I remember Vision, I remember Thanos killing him." As she spoke, red misted around her fingers and swirled in the air under the bed.

"That is... not something you could do... as a child." Pietro nodded towards her hands, his words stilted and broken.

"Oh…" She blinked.

"If you can do that? Can I run?" He asked. "Enough to get us out of the room?"

"If not, I can hold back the blast." Wanda said. "I've done it before."

"If we can get out of the apartment and to the stairs, we can tell the politsiya that we waited for two nights, after the bomb failed to go off. We waited for someone to come and get us and when no-one came, we crept out, that it took us a day, just to get from under the bed, across the room to the door. That we moved slowly because every time we moved, the bomb would move and we were scared." Pietro said.

Wanda nodded. "I don't want to stay here."

"Where shall we go?" He asked. "We appear to be children. The politsiya will not just let us go where we want."

"Clint." Wanda answered.

"Which one was he?"

"The one with the bow."

"The one with the boy…?"

"The one you died for…" Wanda nodded.

"And you think he will take us in?"

"He did." Wanda nodded. "He took me in and was like a father to me."

"Then we go to him." Pietro nodded sharply before frowning. "How?"

"We tell the politsiya that he is our uncle."

"Uncle? Will he not know, this is not true?"

"He has a brother that he has not seen for over twenty years." Wanda explained. "There is little resemblance between them, I saw the pictures of him." She 'pushed' the image into Pietro's mind.

"And he will not return and reveal us?"

"No, Clint told me after Thanos, that he went looking and found that Barney died in the first snap."

"Snap?"

Wanda sighed and 'pushed' more memories towards her brother.

"Ugh… Ugly." He grimaced.

"Yes, Thanos was ugly. Inside and out."

"And the Avengers stopped him?"

"Tony Stark stopped him."

"Stark?" Pietro blinked.

"We were wrong about him, brother." She sighed. "His heart is so big. He cared so much. He had a wife and child, but when he had the chance to end Thanos, he took it. Without hesitating. Not even for a second." She showed the memory to Pietro, who's eyes widened.

"He died for… for people he didn't know…" The boy said. "He had so much to live for and he willingly died for people he didn't know…"

Wanda only nodded.

Pietro hummed. "We should leave. Do we worry about clothes or anything else?"

"I want our photo album and grandmama's wedding dress." Wanda said. "We can tell the politsiya that mama had bagged the dress up ready to donate to a charity and that we'd had the album in our room."

"Do you know where they are? Can you get them?"

"Yes." Wanda nodded and sent out thin strands of red mist into the apartment.

"Can you get a bag each for us, some clothes. We can say we were going to go camping or had just come back from a trip to the sea." Pietro suggested.

"Yes." Wanda waited until a bundle of shimmery white fabric slithered to the floor in front of them, a thick photo album landing on it with barely a ripple of ribbon to be seen. More strands of red swirled and pieces of clothing landed between the siblings, followed by a pair of school backpacks. "Grandmama's dress goes in my bag and the album in yours, Piet. Get the pillowslip from you bed, put the album in it. Put in the bag last. Let the politsiya think we picked up the album from our bedroom and the dress from near the door."

"That is why it is in a cloth sack and not a pillowslip?"

"Yes."

A few more minutes were spent carefully selecting clothes and packing them into the bags, before the album and the wedding dress were shoved in, haphazardly, to give credence to their story.

Then they eased out from under the bed and carefully stood. Pietro crouched in front of Wanda and waited while she climbed into his back, her legs around his waist. He grasped her hands in one of his and waited until the familiar red mist encircled the bomb before he took a deep breath and began to move.

They were on the stairs and nearly one floor down, in the time it would have taken Wanda to cross the bedroom. Before they reached the next floor, Pietro came to a stop.

"I can hear people." He whispered.

"We should huddle in there." Wanda pointed to a tiny alcove in front of the building's not-working lift. "Let them find us, there."

~~~

July 18th 1999.

Clint absently picked up his phone when it rang, his eyes following Sam and Riley as they ran around a track they'd laid out.

"Hello?" He said.

"I am trying to reach a Mr Clinton Barton. Are you he?" The woman spoke with a European accent.

"Who is this?"

"I am Iulia Ivanoff, I work for the Sokovian Embassy in Washington DC."

"Sokovian?" Suddenly the woman had Clint's complete attention.

"Yes." The woman replied. "A few days ago, there was an incident, civil unrest has been escalating, you understand. A civilian apartment building was hit by what are believed to be anti-aircraft missiles. There were many injuries and many dead. Two of the survivors are children, twins. They say that you are their uncle."

"Wanda and Pietro." Clint whispered, involuntarily.

"Yes." Iulia said. "However… Our documentation says that their father is-"

"Oleg Maximoff, I know." Clint said. "My brother and I came out of an abusive home, we went through a number of foster homes and an orphanage before we ran away and joined a circus. And yes, I know that sounds far-fetched, but it's true. They took us in and we stayed with them for years but my brother… He didn't handle being given orders, real well. When he was sixteen and I was fourteen, he left. He paid someone to create a new identity for him. I don't know how legal that was and I never asked. We didn't agree on much, as I kept the family name and he didn't. I got postcards from the kids and letters, occasionally. Phone calls, too. I met his family a couple of times, the twins were… like most kids, I suppose. Young and active."

"Ah, we suspected that might be the case." Iulia sighed. "In that case, I suppose there's no chance of you having any documentation to verify this?"

"All I have are a few pictures and some letters." Clint replied. Tony, JARVIS and Nat had worked for days on those, just in case they were needed.

"Oh, that is helpful." Iulia said brightly. "Is there any chance you can get a copy of them to the embassy? We're hoping that you would be able to take the children, the orphanages in Sokovia are over run with new orphans."

"I'll speak to my boss and see if I can get some time off." Clint answered. "I assume that if I call or front up to the embassy, they'll be able to put me in contact with you?"

"Of course, Mr Barton." Iulia agreed. "I'm there Monday through Friday. Reception can page me, at any time."

"I'll get back to you before close of business, today, but yes, I want the kids. They're my family. I want them." He didn't even have to ask Laura, as they'd talked about this many times.

"Excellent, Mr Barton, I look forward to speaking with you in person." Iulia disconnected the call and Clint huffed.

"Something wrong, Hawk?" Bucky came from nowhere to appear beside him.

"Wanda remembers. She told the Sokovian police that their father was my brother." Clint said.

"Huh." Bucky grunted.

"I gotta speak to Tony and get some time off, the embassy want copies of the letters and stuff that he and Nat made up, for us. Hopefully, that will be enough to convince them to give me the twins."

"We'll back you, you know that. Having Nat will help. Makes you look stable, a man with a family. Less likely to abandon the twins."

"Yeah." Clint nodded.

"I'll deal with Sam and Riley, you go talk to Tony. Get things moving."

"Yeah." Clint repeated and spun on his heel, to face towards the house.

~~~

"I hate Rio." Yelena muttered as she wiped off a knife on her attacker's shirt. "Stupid bastard." She spat on the ground near the man's head, fairly confident that the rain would wash away any traces of her DNA. She stalked over to his car and slid into the driver's seat, glancing over the interior before putting it in drive and peeling out of the empty car lot.

Now, which safe house in Rio isn't manned? The one in Freguesia? Or the one in Nova Iguacu? What about the supply dump in Alcantara? She mused, to herself. I can't keep this car, either. Pity, it's rather nice, I've always preferred a Mercedes over other makes.

She decided to risk the supply dump in Alcantara over one of the safe houses and headed north-east, towards the city centre, she'd dump the car in Santa Teresa and continue on, on foot.

"Getting so tired of walking…" She muttered.

Six hours later she left the supply dump on a bicycle, that she would need to dump in a few hours, but it was still better than walking. She went back across the bay and turned north, she hoped she to get ten or fifteen miles before she started drawing attention.

Santa Cruz Da Serra was behind her and she was getting close to Santa Lucia, when she decided that the bike had to go. She went into an alley and out the other side without the bike, but kept walking. A few blocks on and she stopped at a little store to buy something to eat. As she left, a hand rose in front of her, it didn't try to touch her, just stopped in the air in front of her chest.

"You are young for a Widow." The old man said in German.

"I am no Widow." Yelena replied, her hands sliding into her pocket, reaching for the knife that she kept there.

"No, of course not." The man agreed, pleasantly, he ignored her unsubtle movement. "What is you mission?"

"I have no mission." His actions were not what she was expecting from a Red Room contact. He was too open, too accepting. 

"Where do you have to go?"

She took a chance and answered, honestly. "New York."

The man blinked. "That is a long way from Rio."

"Not as far as from Buenos Aires."

The man snorted and nodded. "And you are on your own until you get there."

Yelena said nothing, just gave him a flat look.

"Get yourself to Itaipava. There's a private airport there, tell them Matthias Green sent you. That if they help you, Matthias will count a stain, as removed. They'll get you on a flight going… somewhere. Where and how far, I don't know, that will depend on what flights they have and how long you are prepared to wait for a destination."

"I was never here." Yelena said.

"No, and I never spoke to a Widow." The man nodded and walked away, his dog tugging at its lead.

~~~

In Itaipava, the woman that ran the airport looked at Yelena and sighed, letting the money in her hands, fall back to the counter.

"Getting younger every year." She muttered. "Where do you need to go?"

"New York."

"I can't help with that. I can get you to Brasilia, Salvador, Asuncion or La Paz. Take your pick."

"Which leaves first?"

"Salvador and La Paz leave within the hour, Brasilia and Asuncion an hour later." The woman said.

"Salvador, then."

"The blue plane. You keep your bag with you. You don't talk to the pilot. You don't take food and drinks on the plane. Wheels up in thirty-five minutes."

"Bathroom?" Yelena asked.

"Over there." The woman pointed to a cinder-block shed. "There's no hot water, but it is clean and drinkable." She went back to the money on the counter.

Yelena rolled her eyes and headed for the shed, she might not have much time, but she should be able to manage a basin-bath and a quick bite to eat, before take-off.

"Salvador." She whispered. "I'm getting closer, сестра."