summary: "I didn't know you draw." She ducks her head and shrugs her shoulders. "It's not really something I tell people."

rating: PG

author's notes: This is just a random AU, where Pietro lives because I miss him, and where this big brother/little sister duo interact.

—

~ artists ~

.

.

.

She loves when she gets to use her hands for something other than destruction. It brings her a sense of comfort, knowing that she's capable of more than pain and suffering, that her hands can create as much beauty as it can damage.

The team knows Wanda has a passion for music, a momentum engraved in her very soul. As a child, her father taught her and Pietro to play the piano, and their mother taught them guitar. Sometimes running her fingers along the keys of a keyboard or across the strings of a guitar helps remind her of the good memories she keeps stored away of her childhood. But they don't know she can draw.

It's not a passion - not really. It's more of an escape. An outlet for the thoughts and memories she wishes to bury but can't. She started during mission debriefings when she was still with Hydra; whenever she had a pencil in her hand and paper in front of her, she would scribble aimlessly along the sides, to relieve herself of the pain of watching her friends die around her, of having to listen to their blood curdling screams echo across the sleek walls of the base.

Of course Pietro has an outlet, too - and of course it's running. It helps him calm down, as he outruns his fears and problems, but she knows he'll have to face them eventually. She doesn't really run with him anymore - because how can she possibly catch up with him - but she's tired of running; she's done it for almost her whole life. So she draws.

And she's glad she has an outlet, as ten years ago today marks the death of their parents. In previous years with Hydra, she would bury herself in the training Strucker wanted them to undergo before the experiments and burn herself out, but today, she doesn't want to be angry or sad. Her parents wouldn't want that, either. She's perfectly content with staying in her room aimlessly drawing, just as she knows Pietro is content running his heart out and not coming back until he's at peace.

The thing about sketching is that it isn't anything specific; she can draw whatever she sees or thinks about and her eyes don't even really need to be looking at the page. She keeps stacks of papers underneath her bed and she knows they're all random drawings of the places she's passed by in New York, or even places in the compound; she even draws her friends. And sometimes, she'll add color to the ones most important to her: like the red of Natasha's hair, or the blue of Steve's eyes, and the gold fragments of Tony's suit.

Her fingers glide as the pencil in her hand lightly strokes against the almost filled sheet of paper, before she hears a soft knock against her door. Wanda turns her head towards the nearest clock and is surprised that it's already such a late hour in the afternoon. She's really been in her own world.

"Come in," she calls. The door gently opens and Steve pokes his head in.

"Hey," he greets. "Haven't seen you or your brother in a while. You good?" Wanda gives him a small, but no less bright smile. Ever since Ultron, Steve has been this sort of big brother figure (Pietro does not count, no matter how many times he insists he's older) that she can't seem to get rid of - nor does she want to, really. It's nice having someone looking out for you.

"Yeah, I'm okay," she responds, and he nods, gets ready to close the door again before he pauses, and his eyes scour across her room. She looks down to see several papers littering her bed and floors, and she lets out a little laugh. She doesn't need her powers to know he's curious as he takes a step further into the room, looking around at all the scattered papers. Steve bends down to pick one of them up - she's kind of curious to see which one he found - and he sort of reads her mind as he turns it to face her. It's one of Clint's farm, where he took her and Pietro to lay low for a while after Ultron, with a sunrise behind it. She remembers how the image had burned beautifully in her mind, and how she'd wanted to bring it to life on paper.

"This is amazing," Steve says, the look on his face a mixture of boyish awe and glee. She shrugs her shoulders, trying - and failing, to hide a smile. He picks another one up, this one of the forests in Sokovia with tall jade trees stretching upwards to the blue sky, and she hears him mumble a "wow" under his breath. It reminds her of all the times she and Pietro would spend most of their days as children; running through the forests without a care in the world, oblivious to their war-stricken home.

Steve looks down at the paper in her lap, and it makes her avert her gaze to it too. A smile spreads across her face as she takes in her work: it's a little girl with long hair sitting by a piano, a little boy with a guitar in his hand, and a man and woman sitting further away, but with bright smiles on their faces.

"I didn't know you could draw," he says. She ducks her head and shrugs her shoulders again.

"It's not really something I tell people," she replies. "It helps me, I guess." He keeps his gaze even and she knows he's asking her to continue, but only if she wants to.

Wanda breathes in. "With Hydra, my brother and I weren't the only volunteers," she says truthfully. "There were almost a hundred, and many of them were my friends." Steve shifts closer to her in reassurance and it encourages her to finish.

"But they died, all of them; one by one from either the experiments or the missions. I still remember them, along with my parents, and drawing helps drown it out. Helps me forget for a while."

Her friend nods in understanding and he takes out a small notebook from his back pocket. For some reason, Wanda always thought it was a planning book (Steve is the Star Spangled Man With the Plan, as Sam and Natasha had put it bluntly), but her eyes widen when he opens the thing and reveals sketches (so many sketches) of anything and everything. And they're beautiful.

"I draw because it's my safe place, I guess," he says casually, as if she's known he draws this entire time. "Before I was all…" he gestures to himself, "Captain America, I was a scrawny kid who couldn't really do anything because I was sick most of the time. But drawing let me escape all that - the war, my illnesses - and it was one thing I could do without being physically capable."

Wanda nods and asks, "May I?" as she gestures towards the notebook. He hands it to her and she feels her jaw drop slightly as she looks closer at some of the sketches; he put so much detail into these and she wonders why he doesn't become an artist. While she draws to cope, Steve has a talent for art and she wouldn't be surprised if he were to choose that career should he ever stop being Captain America. "These are beautiful, Steve," she says wholeheartedly, and he laughs sheepishly.

"I guess," he replies.

"'You guess?'" she asks and arches her eyebrow in disbelief, lips twitching into a smile. "This… this is talent."

Steve laughs again, and says, "Thank you. You're talented, too, though. Why didn't you tell us?"

"It isn't really that important," she dismisses, and his eyes narrow in disagreement.

"Of course it is," he retorts, and she tilts her head again to hide another smile. Though she's mostly used to the team's affection for one another, it still surprises her, as it was everyone for themselves in Sokovia. It shocks her to no end how incredibly different they are from what she previously thought but she's glad that she was wrong.

"Anyways," he continues. "Natasha was looking for you; she said something about going out to a thrift store and that you'd go with her."

Wanda breathes out a laugh; of course Nat knows that she needs a distraction right now to escape her mind, and she couldn't be more grateful. She retracts herself from underneath all her papers and off the mattress. "Thanks for telling me."

"No problem," he says and his genuine smile turns into a grin. "Now about you and Bucky…"

She rolls her eyes as they make their way out of her room. "About you and Nat," she retorts wryly.

"Oh no, you and Sam joke about that everyday…"

They continue to go back and forth until she finds Nat, and she's not that surprised when she sees a sketchbook and colored pencils neatly on her bed a week later, with a note that says 'keep drawing!'

And she does.

.

.

.

fin